Montreal Canadiens forward Jake Evans kept his own blog through the 2026 Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic against the Winnipeg Jets at Princess Auto Stadium on Sunday.
In his final entry, Evans discusses the Canadiens 2-1 win against the Jets and what it was like to play in his first NHL outdoor game in front of 32,342 fans.
That was great, it was a really cool experience.
It was loud and it was a really unique experience that you’re not going to have very often and then to end it with a win, it was obviously icing on the cake.
I think every shift when I was on the bench, I was kind of looking around a little bit taking in the atmosphere. It was incredible. But once you hopped on the ice, it felt like a regular game.
I think the ice conditions were better than I expected. Obviously, it’s not an indoor NHL rink, but it didn’t feel like it affected the game too much at all.
The depth perception was still a little tricky. If there were pucks in the glass or in the air, it was a little bit trickier, but I think skating yesterday at practice helped a lot.
Overall, I think when you’re done playing, you’re going to look back at your career and think about certain moments, and this will be one of them.
It was a close game and Jacob (Fowler) looked really confident out there and made a lot of shots look easy and stepped up in those big moments in the third (period). It was a big win.
We’ve now won two games without Nick (Suzuki) and he’s our top player and our leader.
I don’t think we lacked any confidence in how we can play without him, but if we can string together some wins without and then when he comes back, it will only help.
