As many people will party on the street outside Bell MTS Place Friday night as they will inside the arena as the Winnipeg Jets try to punch their ticket to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The Jets can eliminate the Minnesota Wild with a victory, which would be the first NHL playoff series win by a Winnipeg team since 1987 and just the third ever.
With each passing home game, the Whiteout Street Party has grown in size and will now balloon to include Graham Avenue from Hargrave Street to Smith Street.
That’s in addition to Donald Street between Portage Avenue and St. Mary Avenue. That stretch of Donald will be closed until 1 a.m. Saturday as crews prepare for a massive crowd.
“We’ve planned for quite a big crowd tonight,” Economic Development Winnipeg CEO Dayna Spiring said. “We’ve got room for just over 15,000 people. We’ve also got the Millennium Park Library, which is an alcohol-free zone that we’ve kind of earmarked for families. We’ve got a lot more capacity in there as well, we can take some overflow in there.”
With temperatures expected to stay in the double digits throughout most of the game, Spiring hopes to see a party unlike any the city has seen.
“Our first game, we saw 5,500 fans sit outside and watch the game, and last Friday when it was freezing out, we had about 9,000. Spring has arrived in Winnipeg, and we have huge expectations for tonight.”
Spiring is also inspired by how the city has rallied together to support the Jets.
“We went through a whole series of time when we stopped investing in the city,” Spiring said. “We didn’t have Bell MTS Place, we didn’t have Investors Group Field, we didn’t have a new airport or Assiniboine Park to go and get us together. We’ve now spent the last decade or so investing in those assets. The momentum in Winnipeg has shifted, and we have so much to be proud of.”
Expect plenty of police on hand to make sure things don’t get out of hand, and to make sure the 4/20 rally at the Legislature doesn’t migrate towards the arena.
“It’s a long evening for our officers, but it is a really great celebration. I’ve really never seen anything like it in Winnipeg,” Constable Rob Carver explained. “I was really excited to be there and be part of it. I felt it was an honour to work and I think most of my fellow officers felt the same. You can just see, you can feel the enthusiasm and excitement from everybody who’s there.”
The party officially opens at 4:30 p.m. with five TV screens and more washrooms added, along with all the vendors that were present for the first two games. Puck drop is at 6:30 p.m
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