Winter Classic in Miami a spectacle, but Panthers fall to Rangers

By Jordan McPherson
Updated January 3, 2026 2:42 AM

The NHL’s Winter Classic in Miami lived up to — and potentially exceeded — expectations in so many ways on Friday night. As baseball met hockey, sand met snow, hot met cold, palm trees met frozen tundra (up to and including a simulated snow storm) at loanDepot park, home of the Miami Marlins in the Little Havana neighborhood, the league showed it could put on a spectacle of an outdoor game in the Sunshine State.

Everything was great. Well, almost everything for the home team. “It was a great setup,” Florida Panthers forward Eetu Luostarinen said, “other than the score of the game.” The Panthers, back-to-back Stanley Cup champions playing in and hosting their first-ever outdoor game, fell behind early and never recovered in a 5-1 loss to the New York Rangers in front of a sold-out announced crowd of 36,153. Mika Zibanejad had a hat trick and factored into all five goals for the Rangers (20-18-5), who are now 6-0-0 all-time in outdoor games. Artemi Panarin scored twice and had an assist. Alexis Lafreniere had three assists. Sam Reinhart scored on the power play in the third period for Florida (21-16-3), but Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin was solid with 36 saves. And to make matters worse, Panthers defenseman Seth Jones — who earlier in the day was named to the United States’ Olympic roster — left in the first period with an upper-body injury and did not return to the game.

“There was a lot of energy in the building,” Luostarinen said. “Just a pity we didn’t do better for them.”

It put a simmer into what was otherwise an event to remember that up until a few years ago seemed like a pipe dream of occurring. The Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning are each hosting outdoor games about a month apart from each other — Tampa Bay hosts the Boston Bruins on Feb. 1 at Raymond James Stadium in a Stadium Series game. The Sunshine State’s two teams have represented the Eastern Conference in the Stanley Cup Final each of the past six years, with each team winning the Cup twice. So the league wanted to give them their due and test the limits of what could be done with outdoor hockey. As far as putting on the game itself, things couldn’t have gone smoother on Friday. It took less than two weeks to fully create the rink. The ballpark’s retractable roof made for a safe and easy environment to create the ice. The league leaned into the fire-meets-ice-esque theme that was natural for its southernmost outdoor game. “It’s a great event,” said Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad, the It was an awesome experience. Really happy I was able to experience something like this. Would have loved to get a win, but at the end of the day, true first class experience.”

The Panthers leaned into the festivities as well. They arrived in style, pulling up to the ballpark in Ferraris while wearing Miami Vice themed attire and cigars in hand. Fans lined up the north side of the ballpark for their arrival, which coach Paul Maurice said reminded him of a miniature version of the two Stanley Cup parades the team has had on Fort Lauderdale Beach the past two Junes. Florida skaters wore bucket hats for pregame warmups. Fake snow cascaded down on the ballpark as the retractable roof opened during pregame festivities, which included both players walking to the ice from their respective dugouts to a performance from Grammy-award winner Luis Fonsi. Ekblad, Roberto Luongo and Vincent Trocheck took part in the ceremonial puck drop before the game. And at puck drop, it was a brisk 63.2 degrees, making the game the second-warmest out of 44 outdoor games in NHL history. Only the 2016 Stadium Series at Denver’s Coors Field (65 degrees) was warmer. The ice, with sheets made about an inch thicker than usual, held up for the entirety of the game. Florida’s injured players had front-row seats to the game. Most notably, Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, both still out while rehabbing from surgeries (Tkachuk a torn adductor muscle and sports hernia, Barkov a torn ACL and MCL in his right knee), were near the Panthers’ bench in shallow center field for part of the first period before retreating to the dugout where they joined their teammates.

Tkachuk has been skating with the team in a non-contact sweater for a little more than a week now and told TNT pregame that “it’s gonna be very, very soon when I’m back.” Barkov, meanwhile, is likely out until the Stanley Cup playoffs should Florida qualify — the Panthers are on the outside looking in right now in a tightly contested Eastern Conference.

But while the fanfare lived up to the hype, the Panthers did not live up to expectations on the ice — and, regardless of the spectacle, there were a valuable two points up for grabs. Florida couldn’t capitalize despite 87 shot attempts — 30 of which were blocked and 20 more of which missed the net. The Rangers scored twice in 64 seconds in the first period to give New York the early lead. First it was Zibanejad with 4:51 left in the opening frame when he took a pass from Lafreniere in the slot on the power play and sent a wrist shot past Sergei Bobrovsky. Artemi Panarin’s shot through traffic just over a minute later gave the Rangers the 2-0 advantage. Zibanejad made it 3-0 on a two-on-one with Lafreniere 58 seconds into the second period. Reinhart broke up the shutout bid 2:20 into the third period with his 23 overall goal of the season on the power play after being set up by Sam Bennett and Ekblad. He appeared to add a second power-play goal with 2:21 left on a six-on-four advantage but it was overturned after officials ruled the puck was kicked into the net. Florida went just 1 for 6 on the power play and only had five shots on goal in 12 minutes of action with the man advantage. Panarin answered on a Rangers power play with 7:35 left to extend the Rangers’ lead back to three goals, and Zibanejad capped scoring with an empty-net goal with 1:28 left to play to secure his hat trick.

“Obviously you would like a better result,” Reinhart said. “It’s been a heck of a few days, but ultimately we would have liked a better game from the get-go. We might have pushed at times, but they made it difficult in front of our net and made it easy in front of theirs. That seemed like the difference tonight.” The result was disappointing. Maurice won’t deny that. But for the moment, just a brief moment, Maurice isn’t worrying about that. He’ll focus on what needs to be corrected before the team plays the Colorado Avalanche on Sunday in due time. However, the event and the grander effect he hopes it has for hockey in Florida overall is what he’s taking away from Friday night. “The story really is the show that went on here today, the spectacle of it,” Maurice said. “It’s not the X’s and O’s. This was brilliant, just absolutely brilliant.”