If Carter Hart squints hard enough, Lake Tahoe will be a perfect site for the Flyers against Boston

Carter Hart will be the youngest goalie ever to start an outdoor game. He said he’s excited after missing out on a chance two years ago.

The NHL has staged 30 of these contests. This weekend will be the first time where the only invited guest is Mother Nature, though she’s bringing her favorite sun.

“I have a little bit of experience with outdoor games,” Hart said. “We’re all looking forward to it.”

Well, not “all.”

The Flyers again will be without forwards Claude Giroux, Travis Konecny, Scott Laughton, Oskar Lindblom, and defenseman Justin Braun, who are on the COVID-19 protocol list.

Beyond the excitement of playing hockey on a golf course, there are two points in the standings at stake for the Flyers and a skid against the Bruins that is lingering like a dull headache. Each team will practice at the makeshift rink early Saturday morning prior to Colorado’s game against Vegas that afternoon.

There will be no fans, no stands and only mountains in the background, so Hart will have to adjust to different site lines. But there’s a larger issue, according to a guy who knows these things.

“The bigger concern as a goalie is the glare from the sunshine,” said NBC analyst Brian Boucher. “It’s not only the sun you have to worry about, but the reflection off of the ice. They paint the ice white, so it’s not like you’re skating on a pond that has dark water underneath. This is a white sheet of ice against the sun. There’ll be a lot of squinting, for sure.”

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It was enough of a problem that the league moved up Sunday’s start an hour to 2 p.m. ET. That’s an 11 a.m. start local time.

Tuukka Rask, who will start for the Bruins, is 9-0-2 against the Flyers since the middle of the 2015-16 season. Overall, Philadelphia has lost five in a row to Boston, including three in regulation. They’ve blown three third-period leads this season. Their only win against the Bruins lately came in Toronto in August when Rask was at home in Finland tending to his ill daughter.

Rask is 1-1 in his two outdoor starts (2016 and 2019). Hart, at 22 years, 192 days, will be the youngest goaltender to start an NHL outdoor game.

Hart would have started the 2019 Flyers-Penguins game at Lincoln Financial Field, if not for a last-minute lower-body injury. He did start a preliminary game at the 2018 World Junior Championships held in the stadium where the Buffalo Bills play when he was 18. He gave up three goals before Canada lost in a shootout.

“You have to adjust a little bit when you’re outdoors,” Hart said. “That’s what we’ll have to practice when we get out there on Saturday in the morning. It’ll be good for us to get out there and get familiar with the scenery, the rink, the weather. I think that will be important Saturday.”

Sunday will be the second time these two rivals play outdoors. The first was at Fenway Park in 2010 when Rask was a rookie who stepped aside while Tim Thomas started against Michael Leighton. Hart was in grammar school.

Sunday’s forecast for Lake Tahoe is chilly, but sunny.

“It’ll be an adjustment for these guys to figure out a way to minimize that glare,” Boucher said. “It’s going to be interesting for the goaltenders, no doubt about that.”

Boucher said the lack of a crowd and the various physical barriers at arenas should give NBC a chance to show the game in a unique way.

“You know when you go to a game live and you sit about 20 rows up, and you can really get a feel for the speed of the game, for the size and the skill?” said Boucher, who will analyze the game from his usual ice-side position. “My hope is that that translates to TV and is brought into people’s living rooms. Especially with the hi-def TVs that we have now.”

According to SportsBusiness Journal, the NHL recently raised $1 billion in the private market to supplement its 31 teams who have been hurt by the revenue drain caused by the pandemic. Fans slowly are starting to trickle back into some markets – New York, Columbus, but not yet Philadelphia – and the league needs a good showing this weekend to help grow interest.

There will be no artificial fan noise. NBC hopes the sounds of the game and the background scenery paint a picture worth much more than a thousand words. Boucher, who played six of his 13 NHL seasons for the Flyers, is looking forward to the two drones which will hover the rink.

“If we can get those cameras close enough to the ice, maybe we can create that same feeling you get at a game live,” he said. “Maybe that will hook some fans who maybe aren’t fans or who are casual fans.”

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