NHL Stadium Series Outdoor Hockey Game Sunday In Tampa Could Get Assist From Florida Cold Outbreak

An outdoor professional hockey game in Florida this weekend will get a surprising assist from Mother Nature, despite leaving some fans shivering.

The latest game in the National Hockey League's Stadium Series will take place Sunday evening as the Tampa Bay Lightning host the Boston Bruins at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, the home of the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The Forecast

If this game would have been played last Sunday, the high in Tampa was 80 degrees. Eight Florida cities set daily record highs as hot as 88 degrees last Sunday.

Instead, there's a cold outbreak that won't just affect parts of the East and South, but also Florida.

But if you're reading this from, say, New England or the upper Midwest, you're probably asking, "How cold can an outdoor game be in Florida?"

By local standards, it will be uncomfortable Sunday.

Daytime highs in Tampa won't rise out of the 40s. That's colder than the average low of 54 degrees, and it could flirt with the coldest Feb. 1 high on record of 46 degrees set in 1900.

Also, the game will be played Sunday evening, since in the planning stages, league officials had to consider the possibility that it could be too warm for the ice to play a day game outdoors in central Florida.

You can shave a few degrees off that daytime high for the game itself, which faces off at 6:30 p.m. ET.

Then there's the wind. Northwest winds could knock wind chills — yes, we just used wind chills referencing Florida — into the 30s during the game.

So, this may lead to the weird sight of fans wearing winter jackets, gloves and stocking caps for an outdoor sporting event in Florida.

(FORECAST: Tampa)

NHL Outdoor History

Sunday's game will certainly have a different feel than the most recent Winter Classic.

On January 2, the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers hosted the New York Rangers on an ice rink constructed inside Miami's LoanDepot park, home of Major League Baseball's Miami Marlins.

The ballpark's retractable roof was kept closed with air conditioning cranked leading up to the game, but was then opened just before faceoff with a temperature of 63 degrees.

Sunday night's game will be the 45th game the league has played outdoors since November 2003.

(MORE: NHL Winter Classic By The Numbers)

Sun Belt Dominance

Perhaps the South's recent success factored into these two outdoor games in the Sunshine State in 2026.

Five of the last six Stanley Cup champions have come from the warm-weather cities. Four of those cup championships came from Florida's two teams, the Florida Panthers in 2024 and 2025, and the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2020 and 2021.

The 2027 Winter Classic will be held at Rice-Eccles Stadium on the University of Utah campus between the host Utah Mammoth and Colorado Avalanche. The 2027 Stadium Series game will be inside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Feb. 20 between the host Dallas Stars and the Vegas Golden Knights.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.