TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman said Sunday’s outdoor game was “big motivation” for him to return from an elbow injury that has sidelined him since early December.

And judging from the fact that the Swede was at center ice leading Saturday’s post-practice stretch at Raymond James Stadium, getting stick taps from teammates, it sure looks like he’s playing against the Boston Bruins. Lightning coach Jon Cooper is expecting it.

“Barring him coming in saying, ‘No,’ which I think is extremely doubtful, he’ll most likely be in tomorrow,” Cooper said.

This would truly be a bucket-list moment for the Swede.

Hedman, who was drafted by the Lightning in 2009 and became a cornerstone as the then-depressed franchise won two Stanley Cups, shook his head Thursday at the idea that Tampa could host outdoor hockey.

“Never in my wildest dreams,” he said with a smile.

Truth be told, the NHL didn’t know if it was possible, either.

That’s part of what makes Sunday’s Stadium Series game at Raymond James Stadium so special. This is the 45th outdoor game in league history — and maybe the most ambitious.

“We’ve never done anything like this,” said NHL president of content and events Steve Mayer.

Part of it is the field design and pomp, with a treasure map surrounding the rink, a stick tap to the Gasparilla Pirate Festival that’s expected to bring a half-million people into the downtown area over the weekend. There will be countless props, from barrels to boats to a shipwreck that has identifiers of both the Bruins and the Lightning. Players will walk a plank to get to the ice.

However, what really separates this event is the “engineering marvel,” as commissioner Gary Bettman called it, that the league hopes will enable the teams to play on safe, NHL-caliber ice despite the Florida sunshine, temperatures and humidity.

An air-conditioned, tension-fabric building 34 feet high, 125 feet wide and 240 feet long has stood over the ice sheet for the past week. It’ll be dismantled in a matter of hours on gameday for the 6:30 p.m. ET faceoff.

The forecast calls for an unseasonably frosty high in the 40s on Sunday, so the league changed its original plan of beginning to remove the structure at 6 a.m. Sunday, and will instead begin at 12 a.m.. It will be complete by 10 a.m.

“Gary Bettman, he’s one hell of a commissioner,” Cooper told The Athletic. “Anybody that can make it 40 degrees in Tampa on the night of an outdoor game, he’s wielding some magic wand.”

Jeff Vinik, who sold his ownership share of the team in 2024 but remains its governor, has been asking Bettman about getting an outdoor game in Tampa for as long as he can remember. He said it’s taken about 15 years.

“It was pretty close to the day I bought the team,” Vinik said, which would place his initial pitch in 2010.

Vinik got the NHL’s attention by building the Lightning into a model franchise, winning the Stanley Cup twice and selling out Benchmark International Arena for 10 years straight. Filling the 65,000-seat football stadium was not a problem.

Actually pulling off a game like this was another story altogether.

The rink at Raymond James Stadium is currently inside a climate-controlled structure. (Mark LoMoglio / Getty Images)

Bettman said the Lightning were “relentless” in their pursuit of an outdoor game. That included the team/city putting up a billboard on the highway after the 2018 All-Star Game in Tampa so the NHL officials would see.

It was a photo of an outdoor game at Raymond James Stadium and a Stadium Series logo.

“Thank you, NHL!” it read. “Next time, let’s go outside the box.”

The Lightning have lobbied the NHL for an outdoor game for years. (Courtesy of the NHL)

By the time of the All-Star Game, the NHL wanted to try an outdoor game in Tampa. The Lightning were one of the best teams in the league that season, and would go on to win the President’s Trophy the next season and then the Stanley Cup in 2020 and 2021. It also didn’t go unnoticed that 25,000 Lightning fans traveled to the team’s outdoor game in Nashville in 2022.

The city has pulled off Super Bowls, Final Fours — pretty much everything. Bettman said he felt the franchise “deserved” a Stadium Series game.

“The question was the logistics of actually doing it,” he said.

How do you build an NHL-caliber rink in the heat and humidity, and protect it from rain?

“We felt the team could pull it off and the city could pull it off,” Mayer said. “But could we execute it?”

The NHL made site visits to Tampa and engaged its architectural sports experts to try to figure out how to protect the ice. Dan Craig, who has long been in charge of building rinks for the league, did his research. The league conducted tests at the Nashville outdoor game, stringing a cable the length of the rink between two forklifts to lift a plastic tarp over the rink. Figuring out how to secure it was a problem.

“The first gust of wind and boom, everything was gone,” said NHL executive vice president of events Dean Matsuzaki. “We were like, ‘OK, this isn’t going to work.’”

One of the wilder ideas left on the cutting room floor would have had helicopters lifting a structure out of the stadium and into the parking lot. The league decided that wouldn’t work and would be too dangerous.

It wasn’t until a serendipitous moment during a layover that the NHL got its “eureka moment,” as Mayer put it.

Ryan Hunter and Alex Lentowich were traveling together three years ago when they unknowingly got a big break.

The two co-owners of Texas-based GNB Global, a tension-fabric building manufacturer, were on their way to Winnipeg, near their shared hometown of Cooks Creek. A delayed flight from Nashville stranded them in Minneapolis overnight, forcing them to connect through Detroit the next morning to reach Toronto, then Winnipeg.

“A series of misfortunate events,” Lentowich said.

At the Detroit airport, they saw several people wearing NHL backpacks. As huge hockey fans, they approached them, and after seeing a Stadium Series tag on one of the bags, started discussing outdoor games. One of the NHL reps was Derek King, the league’s vice president of hockey operations, who manages ice conditions for major events. King mentioned the challenges they were having figuring out a solution for a Tampa outdoor game.

Hunter and Lentowich were intrigued and thought they could help. The league invited them to Carter Finley Stadium in Raleigh, N.C., for the next year’s Stadium Series game to show them the setup and requirements. By the time they were flying back to Dallas, Hunter was already coming up with ideas and 3D models.

“Nothing is impossible, right?” Hunter said. “That’s how it all started.”

The idea was to build what looks like a gigantic tent but is actually a steel-framed structure covered in an engineered fabric membrane, inside which the climate can be controlled. Their real challenge was figuring out how to break down and remove it quickly and safely.

Once they came up with a plan, they conducted multiple test runs, the first in September in Texas. The company spent three days last week building the final version of the structure, which is divided into sections on rails so it can be assembled and taken apart without doing so over the rink itself.

“It was like a pit crew, you know?” Mayer said. “They’ve got everybody working together. They have it all down to a science in terms of dismantling and how quickly they can do it. If it took 10 hours, it took 10 hours. If it took seven, it took seven. We just needed to know for game day. Because once you start taking it down, there’s no going back. It was pretty cool how it all came together.”

A rendering from the NHL shows its vision for Sunday’s Stadium Series game in Tampa. (Courtesy of the NHL)

The unfortunate part is that Vinik won’t be there to see it.

After all the years of dreaming and campaigning and nudging the league for an outdoor game, Vinik suffered a major leg fracture during a snowmobiling accident on a trip to Norway with his kids. The team said in a statement Friday that he’s expected to make a full recovery but won’t be able to attend Sunday’s game.

Vinik, in a recent conversation with The Athletic, talked about how much having this Stadium Series game means to him.

“This just isn’t a story about Tampa Bay or the National Hockey League or the sport of hockey,” Vinik said. “This is a story about sports being able to pull something off like this, and it’s going to be a spectacle. We’re pleased to be able to share this with our fans. Our fans want an outdoor game every bit as much as the guy you’re speaking with. It’s going to be on Gasparilla weekend, too. It’s going to be a place to be.”