SALT LAKE CITY — The NHL Winter Classic for the 2026-27 season will be played on New Year’s Eve, league commissioner Gary Bettman announced on Friday.

The Utah Mammoth will host divisional rival Colorado Avalanche at Rice-Eccles Stadium on the University of Utah campus.

Bettman was in Salt Lake City for Game 3 of the first-round series between Utah and the Vegas Golden Knights.

Mammoth owner Ryan Smith said other events will be put together in conjunction with the Winter Classic to run throughout the holiday weekend — highlighted by a postgame concert at the Delta Center on New Year’s Eve.

“Our hope is this is a whole weekend that is a version of an all-star game where we can come in and we can program and activate our state and show our state off,” Smith said. “You can expect a weekend of full programming of events, sports, concerts, and activities that will be pretty special.”

Sabres success

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Rasmus Dahlin and Josh Allen arrived in Buffalo mere months apart in 2018 as foundational pieces for two franchises looking ahead to more prosperous futures.

The path to success proved far shorter for Allen and the Bills, with Dahlin — the Sabres’ captain — acknowledging feeling pangs of jealousy in seeing the out-pouring of love the quarterback and team enjoyed in becoming contenders.

And Dahlin is self-aware enough to understand why after spending his first seven seasons playing for a perennial disappointment before finally snapping an NHL-record 14-year postseason drought this year.

“I’ve gone to so many Bills games, and the whole city is just behind them. And then we just kept losing. It was a bit of jealousy in there for sure,” Dahlin told The Associated Press this week. “But I’ve always known that when we start having success, we’re going to have the same thing. So that’s what kind of drove me for sure.”

Welcome to the party, said Allen.

“I know what it’s like when we’ve got a packed stadium, and we’re rolling and that crowd gets buzzing. There is no other feeling,” the quarterback said. “They must be going out for their pregame skates and just be like, ‘Holy cow, this is freaking amazing.'”

Allen and Dahlin 1st-round picks in 2018

Allen arrived first when the Bills traded up five spots to draft him at No. 7 in April. The Sabres followed in June by selecting Dahlin first overall.

“To see Rasmus and the way he’s progressed since he got here, you can tell by how much his teammates love him by how much they have his back,” Allen said about Dahlin.