NHL Notebook: Blue Jackets to host Red Wings in 2025 Stadium Series at Ohio Stadium and which teams have the best odds to select Macklin Celebrini in 2024 draft

One of the next Stadium Series games was revealed Saturday, as the Columbus Blue Jackets will host the Detroit Red Wings at Ohio Stadium in 2025.

It will mark the first time the Blue Jackets have gotten an outdoor game, and will be hosted where the Ohio State Buckeyes football team play in front of up to 102,780 fans.

Fans have been waiting merely 20 years for a chance to witness their favourite players in a unique outdoor contest, and it couldn’t come at a better time.

The Arnold Sports Festival held in March at the Greater Columbus Convention Centre sits on the same weekend that the matchup will be held (March 1st, 2025) and will host 100,000 visitors with an additional 12,000 athletes.

In November 2022, The Athletic confirmed that officials representing Ohio State had already been discussing hosting an outdoor game at the iconic stadium for a handful of years. Still, the problem was that the venue was not designed for extensive winters, with a typical college football season ending sometime in November.

However, more recently, the NCAA decided to expand its playoff format, meaning teams seeded higher could wind up hosting games in December, so stadiums will have to adapt to the colder temperatures and climate.

The event now leaves the Florida Panthers and the Arizona Coyotes as the only two teams yet to play in an outdoor game, as the rest of the league has had the opportunity to play in at least one outdoor game since 2003.

Now that we are over halfway through the 2023-24 season, the draft odds are already beginning to shape up for teams to see who will land the first overall selection and, ultimately, Macklin Celebrini.

Last year, the Chicago Blackhawks landed highly anticipated prospect Connor Bedard, who has already taken the franchise into the palm of his hands, significantly impacting the organization.

However, Bedard will not be the talk of the town come June. Instead, he has passed the torch onto Celebrini, a Boston University forward dominating the NCAA in his inaugural season with 23 goals, second in the league behind Philadelphia Flyers prospect Cutter Gauthier, and 43 points.

In the lottery, teams are limited to winning the jackpot of picking first twice within five years. This means that Chicago could have the opportunity to do it once more before becoming ineligible.

In the two prior years, Montreal took Juraj Slafkovsky in 2022, and Buffalo selected Owen Power in 2021. Both teams had the best odds of taking the first overall pick.

On the other hand, there have been some exceptions, such as the New York Rangers, who had the 14th-best odds in 2020 but still won the lottery and selected forward Alexis Lafreniere. The Blackhawks themselves are also somewhat of an example of this exception in action, who sat third but came out with the first overall pick, clinching Bedard.

Daily Faceoff‘s Steven Ellis revealed the current 2024 NHL Draft lottery odds as of February 17th.

With the changes to the draft lottery regulations that came into play in 2021, a team can only move up a maximum of 10 spots from where they finish.