Florida Panthers and New York Rangers bring Miami Vice flair to Winter Classic
MIAMI (AP) — The Florida Panthers arrived in Ferraris, cigars lit, dressed in all-white Miami Vice attire — and, in true South Florida fashion, fashionably late.
The New York Rangers followed suit, stepping into loanDepot Park in their own Miami Vice whites.
With that, the 2026 Winter Classic was underway.
At loanDepot Park, home of Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins, an expected sold-out crowd had already begun filling the streets hours before the defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers were set to host the Rangers in the first outdoor game to take place in Florida.
The retractable roof on the ballpark — which has been shut while air conditioning has been piped in to help ice builders create a playing surface suitable for hockey — will be opened not long before the puck drops.
“I would have never thought that I would play in a Winter Classic in Miami and be a part of this cool,” said Florida center Anton Lundell, wearing a baby pink shirt and blue handkerchief to accent his all-white suit. “Obviously we still have the game but everything building up to this game has been awesome and very unique.”
Full circle
For Panthers general manager and hockey operations president Bill Zito, the game — one that’s filled with “wonderment,” he said — represented a full-circle moment. His career path started in baseball, and on Friday, his team was playing on a baseball field.
Zito was a batboy for the Milwaukee Brewers in the early 1980s and still credits general manager Harry Dalton for what became the start of a career that saw him become an agent and then one of the top executives in the game.
“The lessons I learned from that experience impact me, and really then via me, our organization on a daily basis,” Zito said. “I’m not here today if I hadn’t had that good fortune.”
That said, his baseball ways were long ago. When he first arrived at loanDepot Park to see the setup, he asked where the locker rooms were. Baseball doesn’t use that term.
“I forgot,” Zito said. “It’s a clubhouse.”
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