On March 15, 2017, Arthur Staple of "Newsday" reported that the game had been awarded to the New York Rangers. The Rangers originally had planned to play at Blaik Field at Michie Stadium on the campus of the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York but were unable to come up with an agreement to use that facility in time. Yankee Stadium, which hosted the Rangers' games in the 2014 NHL Stadium Series, was ruled out for the Winter Classic because it hosts college football's Pinstripe Bowl a week before the event. Instead, the Rangers reportedly reached an agreement with Citi Field, home of the New York Mets baseball team, to host the event. The same article identified the Buffalo Sabres as the Rangers' opponent. The Sabres were also in negotiations to host the event, both because it marked ten years since the inaugural Winter Classic and because the 2018 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships had already scheduled an outdoor game at New Era Field for late December 2017, which would have allowed the outdoor ice surface to be used for both that and the Winter Classic. League vice president Bill Daly argued that having two major outdoor games in the same facility so close together would have stretched the resources of Pegula Sports and Entertainment too thin, hence why New York City was chosen as the host site. The Sabres were chosen as the opponents in a thank-you gesture from NBC and the NHL for taking the risk on the inaugural Winter Classic in 2008, and the team's poor performance and declining television ratings (at a time when the Winter Classic's ratings are also declining) did not concern NBC.