The NHL Awards show is back in full force this year with some unique elements. With the NHL draft starting two days later, hockey is about to take over Nashville.
When attendees of the NHL Awards and NHL draft walk up to Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, they'll see a statue of Pekka Rinne that was unveiled on March 25.A hockey rink isn't big enough to house all that the NHL's chief content officer wants to deliver to audiences at Monday's NHL Awards.
Bridgestone Arena will play host to the league's first full-sized awards show in front of a live audience since before the pandemic. Last year's edition was unique and stripped down, held at Armature Works in Tampa between Games 3 and 4 of the Stanley Cup final.
The NHL announced on Friday it is also mounting a three-day live music festival outside the arena from Monday to Wednesday on the famed Broadway.
That stage is scheduled to host performances from country stars, including Brothers Osborne and Jo Dee Messina. It will also serve as a viewing party area for Monday's awards and Day 1 of the NHL draft on Wednesday, where Nashville Predators legends Pekka Rinne and Roman Josi are slated to announce their team's second pick of the first round (currently No. 24).
"We're doing the show inside Bridgestone Arena, but outside the arena, there's crowds and it's a big look," said Steve Mayer. "Outside is part of the show, which I think will be unique and add energy."
It's also a great way to draw in casual fans.
TV broadcast preferences are part of the reason why we've been seeing the draft begin to shift away from its long-held weekend time slot. In Montreal in 2022, it ran on Thursday and Friday.
This year, it's Wednesday and Thursday, as there was also some concern about hotel-room availabilities for the hockey world in the middle of Nashville's busy bachelorette-party season.
"In Nashville, booking on a weekend as opposed to during the week — it does make a difference," Mayer said. "Moving it up a day had a lot to do with Nashville and having our audience out on Thursday night. A new audience does come in here for weekends. We're being flexible, keeping an open mind for the future, but TV definitely would rather have it during the week."
After hitting it out of the park as hosts of big NHL events like the 2022 Stadium Series, 2017 Stanley Cup final and 2016 NHL All-Star Game, Nashville is a perfect host city for a super-sized multi-day event — hosting the awards ceremony for the first time and the draft for the first time since 2003.
This will be the first time the awards and draft are held in the same city since Vancouver in 2006.
"A place like Nashville — we felt really confident that we could pull it off," said Steve Mayer, the NHL's chief content officer. "Our interest had always been to try it, and we just never got there in Vegas. So we felt like this would be perfect."
When you're working in Music City, of course, the musicians will be the backbone of the awards show — from country star Dierks Bentley as host to local bandleader John Bohlinger reprising a role he's played at the CMT Awards in the past, leading a house band called JB and the Lady Byngs which will feature special guest performers throughout the show.
Awards presenters include hockey luminaries, musicians and other entertainers. And inside Bridgestone Arena, which plays host annually to the Country Music Association (CMA) Awards, Mayer plans to deliver some unique presentation elements.
"We're probably going to take advantage of some of the sports pieces that are inside the arena that some of these shows don't use," he said. "And when I say that, I mean the ribbon boards and the center scoreboard. We're gonna do some things off of those elements that are sort of unique and different for an awards show."
Another idea he has been mulling for a while: an on-stage panel of broadcasters. Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman will join Paul Bissonnette and Liam McHugh from NHL on TNT to provide live commentary, set up some show elements and chat with special guests.
"I've always thought that would be an interesting piece of an awards show," said Mayer. "To be commenting as if it's a sports show — on the speech that the guy gave, what's coming up and predicting who's going to win the next award. Doing some fun things from the set."
From a production point of view, Mayer and his crew face some unique challenges in mounting the awards and the draft in the same venue, just two days apart. But bringing everyone together in one place — especially a city where hockey people and media like to congregate — also has its advantages.
The 'off' day on Tuesday is jam-packed, including a youth hockey clinic with the draft's top prospects and the EA Sports NHL 23 world championship, then capped off with the Predators' 25th anniversary Broadway Block Party in the evening.
The tradition of holding the NHL Awards in Vegas dates back to well before the birth of the Golden Knights. Now that Vegas is a Cup-winning hockey town, perhaps it makes sense to put the show back on the road.
Mayer says those decisions will be made after the power brokers see how this year's events turn out — and next year looks like it'll be a tight squeeze again, between the last possible day of the playoffs and the beginning of free agency and a new hockey year on July 1.
"There's no real formula on this," Mayer said. "I think we just need to figure out what fits depending on where we are and trying to get it done."
The NHL Awards go Monday from 8 to 10 p.m. ET, broadcast on Sportsnet and TNT. The winner of the Jim Gregory GM of the year award will be announced Wednesday, during Day 1 of the draft.