The documentary series, featuring the St. Louis Blues and Minnesota Wild around the 2022 Discover NHL Winter Classic at Target Field in Minneapolis on New Year's Day (7 p.m. ET; TNT, SN1, TVAS, NHL LIVE), will be part of TNT's coverage,on Wednesdays.
The first of five short-form episodes will air after the Pittsburgh Penguins play at the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday (10 p.m. ET; TNT, SN, SN360, SN1, TVAS, NHL LIVE) and focus on Blues captain Ryan O'Reilly, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the Stanley Cup Playoffs when St. Louis won the Cup in 2019.
O'Reilly has played in the Winter Classic before, for the Buffalo Sabres against the New York Rangers at Citi Field in New York in 2018, but he will be able to share it with his loved ones this time in a way he wasn't able to then.
"We're trying to showcase our great players and those that are going to participate in this game," NHL chief content officer Steve Mayer said. "He opened up his home to us, and you get a glimpse of why the Winter Classic's important but why it's important to their family."
The first episode also includes the wrath of Blues coach Craig Berube.
"There's one intense moment in this particular episode where Berube comes in and he just goes off on the team," Mayer said. "It's going to be, 'bleep, bleep, bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep.'"
The documentary series debuted as "24/7: Road to the NHL Winter Classic" in 2010, when the NHL gave HBO unprecedented, exclusive access to the Penguins and Washington Capitals for four episodes around the 2011 Winter Classic at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh.
It has evolved in the years since.
"We've been doing the show for a very long time, and the show has moved around a bit," Mayer said. "Creatively, it's changed a bit. We're so excited that Turner is all-in on the promotion of our biggest regular-season event.
"You've got two really compelling teams this year in St. Louis and Minnesota, which welcome these types of shows, so they've opened up. What we're hoping to do is give fans and potential viewers of the game a taste of the teams and who they are and the players."
The NHL used to co-produce "Road to the NHL Winter Classic" with an outside company, but now NHL Studios is producing the show exclusively, editing it at the League's brand-new facility at Manhattan West in New York City. Mayer is executive producer. Jay Nelson and Steve Stern are producers.
"Over the years, we've grown our internal production team, and it's exciting to know that we no longer need to go outside to produce a show of this high quality," Mayer said. "For us, this is a big leap, and with new [U.S. TV] partners, we've been able to establish their confidence in us to produce quality programming like this for them."
