NHL Stadium Series success in Raleigh may open new (out)doors for Carolina Hurricanes

Two weeks after the Stadium Series game at Carter-Finley Stadium lived up to everything both the Carolina Hurricanes and the NHL hoped it would be, the Hurricanes want to do it again, sooner than later.

“An outdoor game every five years is what we’re talking about,” Hurricanes general manager Don Waddell told The News & Observer. “The Draft and the All-Star Game are great, but we’d like to get back into that, where the league makes a commitment to us every five years or something like that.”

Such a commitment could be predicated on the city, county, PNC Arena authority and N.C. State all allowing Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon to develop the 80 acres surrounding the arena, a project that is currently being discussed on a parallel track with the proposed renovations to the arena itself.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has been a strong advocate for upgrades inside and outside the arena, and he’s dangled rewards in front of the Hurricanes before. In 2001, Bettman promised the Hurricanes an All-Star Game if the team met ticket-sales targets that spring. The successful campaign led directly to the 2011 All-Star Game at PNC, a rousing success that at the time cemented the Triangle’s status as a model non-traditional NHL market.

The playoff drought that followed called that into question, until the team’s recent on-ice success and the Stadium Series game once again removed all doubt.

“This is different,” Bettman told the N&O before the game. “This is bigger.”

And that’s the direction the Hurricanes want to go in the future.

“We’re the best outdoor game market, at Carter-Finley,” Dundon told the N&O. “I think that’s what we all learned from that. Do the All-Star Game in Miami or Las Vegas, where the players want to go. But there’s no other market that has people tailgating all day long and has a perfect stadium right in their parking lot. This is what we are. It’s the perfect product for this market.”

The idea of bidding to host the NCAA’s Frozen Four — previously discussed and discarded — is also back on the agenda, although that may be of more interest to the Greater Raleigh Sports Alliance than the Hurricanes at this point. The hurdle in the past has been concerns about the revenue guaranteed to the NCAA and whether this market could recoup that expense if some of the smaller college teams that don’t bring as many traveling fans qualify.

Still, not only was the NHL event a rousing success, the fact that a club college hockey game drew more than 20,000 fans to Carter-Finley opened some eyes. Since the three Triangle ACC schools aren’t likely to add Division I hockey anytime soon — the startup costs are astronomical, between facility construction, travel and the need to add men’s and women’s teams simultaneously for Title IX reasons — it’s easier to bring NCAA hockey to the Triangle for a weekend than it is on a permanent basis.

And as the Stadium Series showed, this area loves a big event. The Frozen Four is that.

“The conditions and the momentum have never been better to consider a Frozen Four bid,” GRSA executive director Scott Dupree wrote in an email.

Dupree’s team is responsible for coordinating bids for NCAA events with host universities. The next bid cycle, covering 2026-2030, begins this summer with decisions being announced in the fall of 2024. Anaheim, Calif., in 1999, was the first non-college-hockey market to host the Frozen Four, and several NHL arenas in areas without Division I hockey teams have hosted since or will host soon, including Tampa (2012, 2016, 2023), Philadelphia (2014) and Las Vegas (2026).

Either way, indoors or outdoors, doors are open that weren’t before.

“I got so many notes, including from the commissioner, about how it couldn’t have gone any better,” Waddell said. “We’re very, very pleased with not only how everything went but the amount of attention it got. It took over the city for a week to 10 days leading up to the game.”

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