Memories from the Great Outdoors  

Back to the basics.

This weekend, the Rangers are headed outdoors as they are slated to play in the 2024 NHL Stadium Series at MetLife Stadium on Sunday afternoon against the New York Islanders.

In what marks the organization’s fifth outdoor contest, there’s some familiarity with playing outdoors within the roster – everything from those with little-to-no experience skating in the open air (and in inclement weather) to those who practically grew up skating on an outdoor pond. Read up on some of the Rangers’ favorite outdoor memories.

Will Cuylle

Growing up in Toronto, there were a lot of outdoor rinks. We spent a lot of time out there and then would come inside and have hot chocolate from Tim Hortons afterwards – that was probably my favorite memory, just coming inside and having the hot chocolate after. I haven’t played outdoors in probably 10 years, but I liked that it’s sunny outside and bright. I usually would go out there with just me and my dad, but sometimes with my friends.

Barclay Goodrow

I don’t have a specific [memory]. I think just shoveling the pond and getting out there. My dad made a rink one year in the backyard. He just made a board with a bunch of wood and made a whole rink setup for me. We’d be out there with the garden hose to flood it. Those were good memories.

Zac Jones

I got to skate on the pond one time growing up. Just once. It got cold enough in Richmond just one time. We have a pond right by my house, but it never froze more than like two inches, so it was never enough to go skate. But one winter it was like seven or eight inches thick. I had three days out on the pond to myself. My brother was out there, too, so it was a special memory. That was the only outdoor experience I’ve ever had. I’ve never had any other games or practices, so I’m really looking forward to this. Growing up as a hockey player, you want to go skate outdoors on the pond and I never really got that experience, so I’m just really excited.

Kaapo Kakko 

My grandparents have an outdoor rink just a one-minute walk from their house. But it wasn’t like a rink – there were no walls, just nets. You could skate on it. I started skating over there. I’ve been skating there every winter. In the end, when I played my last couple of years over there [in Finland], I also lived with them. They have one big house with two sides – it’s kind of like two apartments, so I was on the other side. I was playing on a men’s team in Finland, and on the off days, I would go there and skate in the meadow. I’ve been skating there my whole life.

Chris Kreider

It’s hard to pick one. I feel like I’ve been lucky enough to play in a few [outdoor events]. That’s what you remember from your childhood, right? Growing up, just playing outdoors, everybody’s having fun competing. You don’t see the sun for three quarters of the year playing indoors, so it’s nice to get outside and play our sport the way it’s meant to be played.

Growing up in Mass., there were a lot of ponds that would freeze over and become outdoor rinks. There were always a lot of opportunities to get outside. I was lucky enough that my dad built a rink. We flattened out the area, put down a tarp, some boards, we had a little stream so he’d take as much water as he could from the stream and filter it into the area we set up. It was always so much fun, lots of memories.

Ryan Lindgren

World Juniors back in 2018 [where USA Hockey got bronze]. Adam [Fox] was there, so that was pretty cool that we did that together. We played Canada [in the Preliminary Round] and beat them in a [4-3] shootout. It doesn’t get much better than that. It was a fun atmosphere. It was packed, it was snowing during the game, we were all fired up, it was just a fun experience.

Growing up in Minnesota, we had an outdoor rink close to my house that a bunch of people would all go to. I spent a lot of time out there.

K’Andre Miller

Probably playing up in Duluth, Minn. There’s a couple of outdoor rinks up there where we used to play out on the pond for a tournament. It was a cool atmosphere. It had to have been like negative-20 [degrees] or something. It was cool, though, because you could see your breath. It was a cool experience.

For a Minnesota guy, just growing up going out on the lake a little more and trying to get out on the pond as much as I could when I was younger, playing outdoors just brings back all of those memories.

Braden Schneider

I’ve never played in an outdoor game before, but just growing up in Canada, almost every day after school, if we didn’t have practice, we would be on an outdoor rink that was right next to our school. My buddies and I would be out there from right after school until dinner and then sometimes go back out there until the sun went down after that. We did that from about mid-November and then it probably would last until the end of February, maybe a little longer. It was super nice if you liked the cold and you wanted to skate in it. Playing outdoors was great.

But I think one of the best memories I had was at my grandparents’ [house]. They lived on a lake, and one Christmas, we had all of our family come in and they made a pond out back on the lake for us. That Christmas, we were all out on the ice. That was just a lot of fun.

Jimmy Vesey

I played a little bit of pond hockey when I was young. It wasn’t an all-the-time thing, but we had a few ponds in our town that we used to all go skate on. In high school, I got the chance to play in an outdoor game. At the time, they were not that common. It was the year that the Winter Classic was at Fenway [in 2010]. That was a really cool experience.

Then, in 2018, we got the Winter Classic here [with the Rangers against the Buffalo Sabres at Citi Field]. That was probably the best memory for me. I feel like the Winter Classic is just an all-around original. The way we won that game [3-2] in overtime was great to cap it off.