Outdoor hockey. In Miami. It's finally going to happen on Friday, when Panthers play Rangers

MIAMI (AP) — The NHL played its All-Star Game in Tampa in 2018, and when league officials were leaving town they couldn't help but notice a billboard that was created for the occasion.

“Next time,” it read, “let's go OUTSIDE the box.”

The play on words was clear. A seed was planted. And for the next few years, the NHL, the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers kept talking about how they could bring outdoor games to the Sunshine State.

On Friday, the waiting ends. At loanDepot Park, home of baseball's Miami Marlins, a sold-out crowd is expected to watch the Panthers host the New York Rangers in the first outdoor game to take place in the state of Florida. The retractable roof on the ballpark — which has been shut while tons of air conditioning has been piped in to help ice-builders create a playing surface suitable for hockey — will be opened not long before puck drop.

“I know it’s cliche, but it’s like little kids at Christmas," Panthers hockey operations president and general manager Bill Zito said, when asked to describe what the feeling is like going into the game. “It’s anticipating this wonderful celebration of our game on all the levels and with our families and with our friends and new fans and our fans.”

The game Friday will be the first of two in Florida this season; the Lightning get their home game Feb. 1 against the Boston Bruins at Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

For each of the last six years — Tampa Bay in 2020, 2021 and 2022, then Florida in 2023, 2024 and 2025 — a Sunshine State team has made its way to the Stanley Cup Final, with the Lightning and Panthers both winning twice in that span.

“We just kept on talking about it," said Steve Mayer, the NHL's president for events and content. "And then we got a lot more comfortable with the ice build, the temperatures — we did a lot of research, this just doesn’t happen — and now we’re here. I can’t believe we’re here, but we are.”

By Miami standards, it's cold these days. The high temperature has been struggling to get out of the 60s, and lows have gone into the low 40s overnight.

And the NHL couldn't have timed this cold snap any better.

The league's equipment arrived at the Marlins' ballpark in mid-December. Custom refrigeration units were installed, and thousands of gallons of coolant will run through hoses from there onto the field to chill aluminum trays that were placed under what became the playing surface.

From there, ice — about 25% thicker of a sheet than usual — started being made in what is a long, slow, gradual process. A water-soluble paint was added to whiten the ice, and this week lines and logos were painted onto the surface.

The process in Tampa will be slightly different; with no roof on Raymond James, the league will build a tent to help build the ice, then take the tent down before the Lightning-Bruins game. The rink used for the Panthers-Rangers game will be trucked over to Tampa not long after Friday's game.

“Our ice crew is amazing,” Mayer said.

Florida was one of two teams never to play in an outdoor game. The Utah Mammoth are the other.

Some Panthers players have taken part in outdoor matchups — Brad Marchand is about to play in his fourth — but many are getting to experience it for the first time. And Marchand said the idea of playing in front of 35,000 or so fans in Miami will only continue the growth that hockey is enjoying all over Florida.

“They're opportunities that don’t come around very often," said Marchand, who went 3-0-0 in outdoor games with Boston. "They tend to be kind of crazy, a lot of mayhem, but they’re moments that when you look back on your career they’re some of your favorite times. They’re the ones that you always go back and talk about. That's a great opportunity for everyone. ... I just think the environment that we’re going to be in will be very unique and special. It’s not often you get to play outdoors in a climate like this.”

Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky played in his first — and until Friday, his only — outdoor game 14 years ago. He's about to set a record for the longest span between outdoor game appearances. And Panthers coach Paul Maurice will coach an outdoor game for a third time.

He said putting on a good show for fans is important.

“It’s not going to look like anything we normally are doing," Maurice said. "And for some guys, it’ll be the only one they ever play in. So, you want to make sure you appreciate it.”

2 — Golf carts will be utilized to carry the goaltenders from the ice to the locker rooms, simply because the distance involved would make it impractical to have them walk like usual.

5-0-0 — The Rangers' record in outdoor games.

15 — loanDepot Park will become the 15th Major League Baseball stadium to host to an outdoor game.

44 — It'll be the 44th outdoor game in NHL history, dating to 2003. Wayne Gretzky and the Los Angeles Kings played an outdoor preseason game in Las Vegas in 1991 against the Rangers; the Kings won, but it's not part of the official outdoor game records.

65 — It was 65 degrees (18 Celsius) for a game in 2016 at Denver, pitting the Colorado Avalanche against the Detroit Red Wings. That's the warmest game-time temperature in NHL outdoor game history (not including that 1991 preseason game in Las Vegas, when the temperature exceeded 90 degrees). Forecasters do not believe Friday's game will break the 65-degree record.

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/NHL

Lounge chairs and umbrellas are shown alongside the ice for the upcoming NHL Winter Classic hockey game between the Florida Panthers and New York Rangers, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025, at loanDepot Park in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

A sign for the upcoming NHL Winter Classic hockey game between the Florida Panthers and New York Rangers is posted at loanDepot Park in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Workers prepare the ice for the upcoming NHL Winter Classic hockey game between the Florida Panthers and New York Rangers, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025, at loanDepot Park in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Workers prepare the ice for the upcoming NHL Winter Classic hockey game between the Florida Panthers and New York Rangers, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025, at loanDepot Park in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Workers prepare the ice for the upcoming NHL Winter Classic hockey game between the Florida Panthers and New York Rangers, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025, at loanDepot Park in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol “does not happen” without Donald Trump, former special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers earlier this month in characterizing the Republican president as the “most culpable and most responsible person” in the criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released on Wednesday a transcript and video of a closed-door interview Smith gave about two investigations of Trump. The document shows how Smith during the course of a daylong deposition repeatedly defended the basis for pursuing indictments against Trump and vigorously rejected Republican suggestions that his investigations were politically motivated.

“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit,” Smith said, bristling at a question about whether his investigations were meant to prevent Trump from reclaiming the presidency in 2024.

“So in terms of why we would pursue a case against him, I entirely disagree with any characterization that our work was in any way meant to hamper him in the presidential election,” he added.

The Dec. 17 deposition was conducted privately despite Smith’s request to testify publicly. The release of the transcript and video of the interview, so far Smith's only appearance on Capitol Hill since leaving his special counsel position last January, adds to the public understanding of the decision-making behind two of the most consequential Justice Department investigations in recent history.

Trump was indicted on charges of conspiring to undo the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, and of willfully retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Both cases were abandoned after Trump's 2024 election win, with Smith citing Justice Department policy against the indictment of a sitting president.

Smith repeatedly made clear his belief that the evidence gathered against Trump was strong enough to sustain a conviction. Part of the strength of the Jan. 6 case, Smith said, was the extent to which it relied on the testimony of Trump allies and supporters who cooperated with the investigation.

“We had an elector in Pennsylvania who is a former congressman, who was going to be an elector for President Trump, who said that what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal,” Smith said. “Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party.”

Accounts from Republicans willing to stand up against the falsehood that the election had been stolen “even though it could mean trouble for them” created what Smith described as the “most powerful” evidence against Trump.

When it came to the Capitol riot itself, Smith said, the evidence showed that Trump “caused it and that he exploited it and that it was foreseeable to him.”

Asked whether there was evidence that Trump had instructed supporters to riot at the Capitol, Smith said that Trump in the weeks leading to the insurrection got “people to believe fraud claims that weren't true.”

“He made false statements to state legislatures, to his supporters in all sorts of contexts and was aware in the days leading up to Jan. 6th that his supporters were angry when he invited them and then he directed them to the Capitol,” Smith said.

“Now, once they were at the Capitol and once the attack on the Capitol happened, he refused to stop it. He instead issued a tweet that without question in my mind endangered the life of his own vice president,” he added. “And when the violence was going on, he had to be pushed repeatedly by his staff members to do anything to quell it.”

Some of the deposition focused on Republican anger at revelations that the Smith team had obtained, and analyzed, phone records of GOP lawmakers who were in contact with Trump on Jan. 6. Smith defended the maneuver as lawful and by-the-book, and suggested that outrage over the tactic should be directed at Trump and not his team of prosecutors.

“Well, I think who should be accountable for this is Donald Trump. These records are people, in the case of the senators, Donald Trump directed his co-conspirators to call these people to further delay the proceedings. He chose to do that,” Smith said. "If Donald Trump had chosen to call a number of Democratic senators, we would have gotten toll records for Democratic senators.”

The communications between Trump and Republican supporters in Congress were an important component of the case, Smith said. He cited an interview his office did with Mark Meadows in which Trump's former chief of staff referenced that Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and current chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, had been in touch with the White House on the afternoon of the riot.

“And what I recall was Meadows stating that ‘I’ve never seen Jim Jordan scared of anything,’ and the fact that we were in this different situation now where people were scared really made it clear that what was going on at the Capitol could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was,” Smith said.

Smith was also asked whether his team evaluated former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s explosive claim that Trump that grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol after a rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021.

Smith told lawmakers that investigators interviewed the officer who was in the car, “who said that President Trump was very angry and wanted to go to the Capitol,” but the officer’s version of events “was not the same as what Cassidy Hutchinson said she heard from somebody secondhand.”

Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

Former Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith accompanied by his attorney Lanny Breuer, leave after his closed-door interview with House Republicans at Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

In this image from video released by the House Judiciary Committee, former special counsel Jack Smith speaks during a deposition Dec. 17, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (House Judiciary Committee via AP)