For the first time since the Montreal Express left town in 2002, the NLL is set to play a regular season game in Quebec. The league announced Thursday that the Toronto Rock will take on the New York Riptide on February 16, 2024.
The game will he played at Place Bell, the home of the Laval Rocket of the AHL.
The announcement follows the roll out of the NLL UnBoxed initiative, which assigned fresh brand identities to 15 markets which currently don’t have NLL teams. The goal of the program is to introduce more young people in new markets to the game of box lacrosse.
The new brands include the Castors de Montréal, making the greater Montréal area an obvious target for the league as they take on tentpole events for the first time in a while.
On the Back of the Bird Podcast this week, Frood said that when considering one-off games like the outdoor game last year in San Diego, the league wanted to go a different direction.
“We want to go neutral site,” said Frood. “To continue to tell our UnBOXed story and find a unique way to do that, so that’s where we shifted our emphasis, certainly for this year.”
When asked why Montreal was selected, Frood said that the game was a product of casual conversations with executives with the Montreal Canadians last spring. Frood called those same executives back with the idea of an Unboxed game, and the rest is history.
“I called them back up and just asked Montreal and the Canadians and their event team if they would be interested in looking at kind of co-marketing an event up there. So the idea was born and we started getting into the weeds pretty quickly.”
The game also follows the unveiling of a French language identity and logo for the league back in July. The game will be broadcast live on TSN as the Game of the Week, and will also appear in French on RDS. Viewers in the U.S can access the game on ESPN+.
Frood said on The Back of the Bird that many of the details of the game have yet to be worked out, but he did have some details finalized. Frood noted specifically that he made plans for a special, neutrally branded turf to be ordered, so neither the Rock nor the Riptide will be using their own turf.
Both teams will have some market familiarity on their sides. Toronto Assistant Coach Bruce Codd and Riptide Assistant Coach Jason Crosbie were both members of the Express in 2002.
The league announced that the game will have lots of additional programming attached to it, both in the form of entertainment and youth lacrosse clinics and camps. Tickets for the game are available at: https://www.evenko.ca/en/events/59131/toronto-rock-vs-new-york-riptide/place-bell/02-16-2024
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