- Utah Mammoth host Colorado Avalanche on Dec. 31 at Rice-Eccles Stadium
- NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman set the date Friday in Salt Lake City
- Read below for what Ryan Smith has planned around the holiday weekend
The 2027 NHL Winter Classic finally has a kickoff time, and it’s on New Year’s Eve.
Commissioner Gary Bettman announced Friday in Salt Lake City that the Utah Mammoth will host the Colorado Avalanche on Dec. 31, 2026, at Rice-Eccles Stadium. The puck drops in the late afternoon out west, putting the game in prime time on the East Coast.
“It’ll be late afternoon, early evening, prime time in the East,” Bettman said, per NHL.com. “Some of it will be under the lights, and we think it’ll be very cool.”
Bettman was in town for Game 3 of the Mammoth’s first-round series against the Vegas Golden Knights, with the two sides knotted at 1-1 heading into Friday night.
The matchup itself was already locked in back in January. Adding the date gives Ryan Smith and the ownership group runway to build out a full weekend.
Dec. 31 lands on a Thursday, which feeds straight into the New Year’s weekend. Smith said the team is planning a postgame concert at Delta Center with a ball drop and three full days of programming around the city.
“Our hope is that this is a whole weekend, that this is a version of like an All-Star Game where we come in and we can program and activate our state and show our state off,” Smith said. “You can expect a weekend of full programming of events, sports, concerts, activities, that will be pretty special.”
Rice-Eccles seats more than 54,000 for college football, which is bigger than any crowd the Mammoth have drawn through their first two seasons. The stadium sits on the University of Utah campus, tucked between the mountains and downtown.
This is the second of three outdoor games on the 2026-27 schedule. Winnipeg hosts Montreal in the Heritage Classic at Princess Auto Stadium on Oct. 25, and Dallas hosts Vegas in the Stadium Series at AT&T Stadium on Feb. 20.
Two years into existence, Utah keeps checking boxes faster than anyone in the league expected.
