Initial Thoughts on the Dallas Stars Playing in Arlington for the 2027 NHL Stadium Series

Big news is big news, even if you have a few little questions

Screencap from @dallascowboys

Back in February, when asked about the potential of another Dallas Stars game outside of a traditional hockey arena, owner Tom Gaglardi said this: “I’d love to see an outdoor game. And that’s gonna happen. I believe that’ll happen.”

Well, that belief has now been justified, as we found out Monday night that the Dallas Stars will indeed be playing another outdoor game—so long as the roof is open.

If you’d been looking forward to actually having a normal February during the hockey season, kick that can down the road once again. Because for the third straight season, something big will be happening in February that concerns the Dallas Stars: specifically, the NHL’s 2027 NHL Stadium Series.

An opponent? Not yet selected. The roof? Purportedly open, weather permitting. Many other details are still TBD, too. It’s over a year away, after all.

Here’s what we do know:

“The National Hockey League is thrilled to bring the spectacle of an NHL Stadium Series game to Arlington and one of the world’s most spectacular sports settings, AT&T Stadium,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. “Ever since its opening in 2009, Jerry Jones has been advocating for an outdoor game at this amazing venue. And we are delighted to partner with the Cowboys and Stars -- two franchises dedicated to the fans of North Texas -- and to create another unique fan experience for a market that has long been a hockey success story and welcomed us so enthusiastically when the 2020 NHL Winter Classic was played at the Cotton Bowl.”

-NHL.com

It’s cool to see a big NHL event back in Dallas after the 2020 Winter Classic, but before discussing the implications of the impending Arlington Spectacle, it’s worth remembering what made the 2020 Winter classic so special.

• First, the event began at 1pm local time on New Year’s Day. In my case, that meant a muted celebration with some friends the night before, some of whom had arrived in town specifically for the game. Having a huge event like this on a holiday automatically increased the prestige, even if it curtailed any crazy New Year’s Eve celebrations the night before. None of us wanted to oversleep on the day of such a big event.

• Second, the event was at the Cotton Bowl, in Fair Park. Some midway attractions were fired up accordingly, and hitting up everything from corny dogs to the ferris wheel on an overcast New Year’s morning was a delirious sort of fun—surreal, even, like sneaking candy out of your stocking early on Christmas morning.

• Third, mass transportation made getting to the event surprisingly easy. If you’ve never used a park-and-ride to take the DART to a big game, one of the coolest things about it is how anticipation builds as your train car fills up at each successive stop, usually with people decked out in team gear. It really drives home just how big of an event this thing is.

There are myriad others, of course, from the tailgating to the pig races and the custom-made temporary tattoos one of my friends made to, most of all, the game itself, which featured the Corey Perry Walk of Shame as well as a dramatic Stars comeback win.

It was a picture-perfect event, even if the crushing crowds in a confined space made things like concessions less than navigable at times. But for an event like this, being trapped in a crowd was sorta part of the appeal. The goodwill was everywhere that day.

So, will the 2027 event rival the perfection that was the 2020 Winter Classic? Well, that’s kind of an unfair question. On the one hand, of course it won’t, because comparing a Stadium Series to a Winter Classic is unfair to begin with. And it’s even more unfair because comapring anything to what my informal crowd surveys have found to be one of many Stars fans’ fondest memories is bound to breed skepticism, right now. Nostalgia always colors the lens with a permanent marker.

But if you go back to the above verbiage from the press release, you’ll realize that, in fact, it doesn’t have to measure up in the same way. After all, this game will be held at “one of the world’s most spectacular sports settings.” And if you know your etymology (or are just moderately competent at spelling), then you know that “spectacular” derives from “spectacle.” And any big event at AT&T Stadium is bound to be a spectacle, on account of spectacle is kind of the whole deal, down there. Here is a real, actual quote from Jerry Jones that he made on, and I am not making this up, the same day as the Stadium Series announcement:

(On a side note, at least you can cross out “serial killing” from your running list of “Possible Dallas Cowboys Philosophies.” I am sure there were some people who legitimately hadn’t done that, yet.)

Some of you will probably be sad to hear that the promised sequel to the last outdoor game in the Metroplex will be in the most glitzy, bombastic venue available. But to you folks, I say, well, listen to Gary Bettman:

“This place is incredible,” Bettman said. “... We think it’s going to be awesome. We had a great experience at the Cotton Bowl with 84,000 people. My guess is that we’re going to beat that number, and I think our fans and everybody in attendance at that game is going to be thrilled to be here. We’re excited and we’re grateful to Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys for sharing their home with us.”

This will be the second outdoor game for Dallas.

“We’ve been to a few markets more than once, we’ve even been to the same stadium in one place more than once,” Bettman said. “... Being in this building is going to be exciting on its own. I mean, that scoreboard, you can’t even describe it. It’s going to be very special, and people when they see the rink will go, ‘This is where they play football? This is where they should be playing hockey all the time!’

-NHL.com

So, there you go. The spectacle isn’t a downside—it’s the main point. I mean, look at that giant TV over the field! How cool is that, right?

It’s going to be huge by design. And if that means you’ll have to sit in a parking lot in Arlington for half the day, well, that’s a feature, not a bug. Those parking lots don’t pay for themselves, buster. (Editor’s note: Parking lots very much do exactly that.)

In fact, if you want a little spice of irony over the whole thing, it’s that the Stars’ second outdoor¹ game will take place in the stadium the Cowboys built after the city supposedly failed to keep the Cowboys in the place where the Stars played their first outdoor game: Fair Park.

(And if you need an added incentive to read that DMN piece, it’s this quote from the infamous former mayor: “The only person I’ve ever patted on the knee is my husband.” That is from an article about a football stadium, really.)

So, that’s what Monday Night Football brought to town this week: An announcement about a big event for the Dallas Stars, made by Gary Bettman (Commissioner of the NHL) and Jerry Jones (Self-styled King of Spectacle and Purported Receiver of Knee-Pats). Somehow that seems like the perfect way for this sort of news to be broken.

Sure, it would have been cool to see it in a more boutique location, like a certain old Ballpark that now calls itself Choctaw Stadium, or even another college football locale in an area rife with them. But if you’ve learned anything about how the NHL doles out these sorts of events, it’s with a major eye towards glamor, sex appeal, and yes—spectacle. So this was always the most likely (only?) way for Dallas to get another such event any time soon.

@dallascowboys on Twitter

Really, if you expected this event to happen anywhere other than the most literally spectacular stadium in town (or at least within two hours’ drive of it), any disappointment is probably your own fault. Because I can’t really think of a better fit than Arlingont for a league that is so wedded to conventional name-brands with these sorts of events that it’s already held two Winter Classics in Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. What better spectacle could there be than a hockey game at a location where the owner’s stated objective is to get you to look at him?

But hey, even if it’s not 2020, that doesn’t mean it won’t be a lot of fun, too. Because despite what the Cowboys Guy might say, the heart of these events isn’t actually spectacle, for those in attendance: it’s celebration.

Celebration with and of the hockey world in Texas, and what it’s become. Because if the first outdoor game was a vindication of what Texas Hockey has become, the second one will be some not-very-humble bragging about the same.

And that’s a party that will be absolutely rock and roll, whether it’s held at the Cotton Bowl or the Death Star. The very best parties transcend their locations anyway.

1. It is technically outdoors if you can look up and see the sky, right?