For Ralph Engelstad Arena general manager Jody Hodgson, looking back three years to North Dakota’s last destination game sometimes feels like it happened a decade ago.
The world has changed immensely since the COVID-19 pandemic started, let alone since UND beat Minnesota 3-1 in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame Game three years ago this Wednesday in Las Vegas.
UND was set to play in another high-profile neutral-site game last Oct. 17 against Penn State at Bridgestone Arena, home of the NHL’s Nashville Predators. That game was completely sold out before being postponed, and a lot of work went into having the game rescheduled to this Saturday back at Bridgestone.
Contracts with 32 hotels had to be redone, and in many cases, fans had to make new reservations and handle reworked travel arrangements. As for on-site event logistics, Hodgson said that Bridgestone Arena and Penn State staff were very accommodating.
There were, however, drawbacks to not being able to play the game as originally scheduled.
“Certainly there were some costs of the 2020 event that we won’t be able to recuperate or get back,” said Hodgson, who oversees operations of UND’s arena in Grand Forks and will be traveling to Nashville on Wednesday.
“Even now, there’s a certain number of people who won’t travel to the event that had previously purchased tickets and were going to go to the event. I think, like everything else in the world today, the pandemic has had some impact on our event.”
A big point of discussion for fans has been the event organizers’ decision to require that fans who attend the game will either have to show proof of either a negative COVID-19 test or vaccination against the virus.
Testing is available this Wednesday and Thursday at Ralph Engelstad Arena, and additional testing will also be available Friday and Saturday at the Cambria Downtown Nashville hotel. Saturday’s testing event runs from 8:30 a.m. until 2 p.m., with the game starting at 7:07 p.m.
“We’ve certainly gotten lots of different feedback on that,” Hodgson said of the COVID check regulations for attending the game. “I think one thing that was rather interesting was when we sent a survey out to our ticket purchasers for Nashville, approximately 80 percent responded back to us that they were fully vaccinated. That’s a high number, and a number that I think certainly was a good number when you talk about either the need for a vaccination or a negative test to get in.
“We didn’t have to set up (for testing in Nashville), but we thought there was a pretty significant number of our fans that were going to need to test in Nashville, based on the timeframe in which a negative test must be pulled. There are people traveling to Nashville before the testing window here in Grand Forks, and there were people who were going to be in Nashville who would need to test there. Some of our survey results showed us that there was a pretty strong demand for testing in Nashville on Friday and Saturday.”
It won’t be long before all the hard work of making the rescheduled Hall of Fame Game a reality, and Hodgson is excited to see the show that UND and Penn State will put on.
“We’ve been planning this ever since the Las Vegas game, and at times it felt like it was a long way away, and now it’s upon us,” Hodgson said. “It’s been a rough stretch for everybody, and we’re certainly happy that we’re coming out of it, and we’re happy to be heading to Nashville.”
