NHL Stadium Series at MetLife An All-Time Classic

 The 2024 NHL Stadium Series has come and gone, and what a weekend it was.  More than 150,000 fans packed MetLife Stadium over two evenings to see two crucial regular season hockey games in the middle of February, and were treated to the best the sport has to offer.

On Saturday the Devils outlasted the Philadelphia Flyers 6-3, while the Rangers stormed back from a 4-1 deficit to shock the Islanders 6-5 seconds into overtime on Sunday night.

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It's one thing to see either 18,000 revelers packed inside Madison Square Garden, the UBS Arena, or the Prudential Center, it is quiet another when 79,000 people are going nuts inside a football stadium, when Mika Zibanejad nails the game tying goal from the corner post.

On Friday players from the Rangers and Devils spoke to the media about how playing in the outdoor games brought back memories of their childhood playing on ponds and lakes while growing up. On Sunday, those emotions bubbled up for the Blue Shirts.

"I to hold back tears because it was so much a spectacle," Artemi Panarin said through his interpreter after the Rangers 6-5 win, the emotion clear in his face.

Let's be honest this weekend was a game changer. For years people always looked at hockey as the fourth most popular sport in the USA trailing football and baseball by a country mile, and basketball as well. But, the NHL proved, and the state of New Jersey proved that there is an desire for big time hockey on the grandest stage possible. And Sunday was an off-Broadway smash.

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The NHL, the players, and the crews working MetLife Stadium went all out to make this feel as big as a Stanley Cup playoff Series. We had the Devils arriving in the pregame dressed in sweats and t-shirts like Tony Soprano -- the famed mob boss of The Sopranos played so well by the late James Gandolfini.

We had the Flyers arriving dressed as Rocky Balboa.

We had Max Weinstein of the E-Street band, the Jonas Brothers, and even members of the New York Giants and Jets all in attendance to highlight the festivities.

It was a wall to wall extravaganza.