Winter Classic field goes deep to give outdoor game Seattle flavor

SEATTLE -- The drama will play out on the big stage, the Seattle Kraken and Vegas Golden Knights performing on a set crafted by Seattle-based Hotopp Creative Studio and the Seattle Shakespeare Company, as if this were a theatrical production.

A ship sinks in center field, the vessel capsized by the Kraken’s tentacles. Thoughtful, authentic Seattle details fill the scene -- piers and docks, boats and buoys, ropes and nets.

Looking for a finishing touch the other day, Gary Wichansky, CEO and head of creative at Hotopp, decided to buy a fishing net to hang over the Kraken’s red eye looming in center. He drove to Seattle Marine & Fishing Supply Co., where commercial fishermen go.

“I told them how big I wanted it,” Wichansky said, “and the guy could only tell me how big it was in fathoms.”

It’s hard to fathom how much went into the spectacle we will see at T-Mobile Park on Monday (3 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TNT, SN, TVAS). The deeper you go, the more you appreciate the transformation of the home stadium of Major League Baseball’s Seattle Mariners.

The players took it all in when the teams practiced Sunday.

“We kind of were just looking around, and we were like, ‘Oh, my goodness, this is crazy right now,’” Kraken forward Kailer Yamamoto said. “It’s awesome what they’ve done here.”

This will be the 39th NHL outdoor game. The League makes each event unique by tailoring the field design to the market. The goal is for the audience to know at first glance where the event is taking place.

The process starts months ahead of time when the NHL develops the primary logo and what is called an “identity system,” a collection of visual elements that work together as the foundation of the brand.

The Kraken brand is ominous, mysterious. You never see the Kraken, just tentacles, just the red eye. Seattle specifically, and the Pacific Northwest in general, also offer a rich tableau. Notice how the primary logo is a compass pointing to the Northwest?

“We had a lot to lean into,” said Paul Conway, NHL group vice president, creative services. "There’s a lot of inspiration there.”

The NHL reached out to Hotopp about the Winter Classic in the spring. Not only was the company based in Seattle, but it had worked on NHL events before, and with the Kraken since they joined the League as an expansion team in 2021-22. Wichansky and his team knew the landscape.

“They did a lot of conceptualizing based on all the assets we gave them, and they came back with the set pieces you see here,” Conway said.

Hotopp had talked with the Kraken about using a shipwreck in some form in the past but had never done it, so Wichansky posed the idea to NHL chief content officer Steve Mayer.

“He was like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s cool,’” Wichansky said. “And then it became just figuring out technically how to do it, where to put it.”

A baseball stadium has more empty space to fill on the field than a football stadium, and the first row of the stands is particularly high in left field and center field at T-Mobile Park. That meant the NHL could put things on the field that could stand taller than usual without affecting sightlines.

“We do sightline studies throughout the entire field design, and you’re usually maxing out around 4 or 5 feet,” said Greg Mueller, NHL vice president, creative services. “This creates that opportunity for a larger build.”

A TNT set would go in left and be disguised as a boat house. A shipwreck would go in center. Wichansky and about half his staff have a background in theatrical set design, and they partnered with the Seattle Shakespeare Company to execute this.

“We typically will build about 20 percent of the project ourselves, and 80 percent of it we partner with somebody in the city where the show is,” Wichansky said. “But here, it was here. We have a relationship with their fabrication shop, so the parts that were too big or we couldn’t fit into our shop, they did.

“The techniques we’re using for this, it’s more like stage scenery than a lot of other things, so it’s simple construction. It’s designed to be more dynamic than it is. It’s really a three-sided box, but it looks snazzy.”

The shipwreck is 60 feet from stern to bow, and the masts are 24 feet tall. Who knows how big the Kraken is under the surface? The masts double as lighting trusses, and the shipwreck doubles as a stage. Seattle’s Heart is the headliner and will perform during the first intermission presented by Ticketmaster.

“The shipwreck obviously behind the benches is pretty sweet,” Kraken forward Jared McCann said. “They’ve done an amazing job. It looks incredible. We’re very fortunate to have a setup like this.”

The players will walk to the ice on piers made partly of printed fabric and partly of real wood. The moorings are made of real wood and rope. The boats and buoys and floats and ropes are all real.

“The detail is definitely noticeable out there,” Kraken defenseman Vince Dunn said. “The boats and the icebergs and all that stuff, all the lights and everything, it’s really cool, and it’s nice to see them put in all the work.”