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Sam Hunt Will Headline The NHL Winter Classic PreGame Show At FENWAY And It’s FREE

Happy New Year, Boston! This is how we are kicking off 2023 in our beautiful city…with country superstar Sam Hunt and hockey! Sam will headline the 2023 Discover NHL Winter…

sam hunt at fenway

2016 Fenway Park

Happy New Year, Boston!

This is how we are kicking off 2023 in our beautiful city...with country superstar Sam Hunt and hockey! Sam will headline the 2023 Discover NHL Winter Classic in Boston on January 2nd. Hunt tweeted about his free pre-game show saying, “We’ll be kicking off the @NHL_On_TNT Winter Classic with a free show, open to the public, at the NHL @BR_OpenIce ‘Breakaway’ pregame in Boston on Jan 2nd. See you there.”

Sam Hunt. Fenway Park. Free concert. Boston Bruins. Are we dreaming? Here's the tweet that made the dream come true:

Ok, so technically, Sam's show will be at the Brookline Lot next to Fenway Park, but still...

This fan experience will be the first of it's kind for NHL fans. The festival leading up to the game will kick-off this Friday, December 30th at the NHL Winter Classic Plaza. This year will be very special as the game at Frozen Fenway Park will star our own Boston Bruins vs. the Pittsburg Penguins. This year's NHL Winter Classic is the fifth NHL regular season outdoor game for the Bs, and the second time the game has been hosted at Fenway. (FYI: Boston beat the Philadelphia Flyers in OT back in the 2010 Winter Classic).

The National Hocky League has been presenting a regular season outdoor game in the new year since 2008. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the first Winter Classic in Buffalo.

Sam Hunt came into country music and made his mark in 2014 with his debut album Montevallo, which was nominated for Best Country Album at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards in 2015. His towering, good looks made Sam an instant country star. Let's take a look at and countdown his eight best songs.

8. "House Party" (2015)

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An upbeat fun song and a big hit for Sam. It’s one of his signature songs.


7. "Break Up in a Small Town" (2015)

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Hunt discussed the process of making the song, saying it was born when he was "singing that chorus melody late one night while riding around trying to come up with song ideas.”


6. "Take Your Time" (2014)

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In the music video for this song, his second radio single, Sam fights a man who was abusing his girlfriend, freeing up the woman to leave with her baby. This song was actually promoted to pop radio six months after its country release.


5. "Breaking Up Was Easy in the 90s" (2020)

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Hunt said of writing the song's content, "In the 90s, there was no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or more, so break ups in the 90's were not easier. The trick was not filling it up with a bunch of technology references and trying to find the story within it. It's just the world's so much smaller now."


4. "Body Like a Back Road" (2017)

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This song spent 20 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart – this made Sam the solo country artist with the second longest run at the top of the 59-year-old “Hot Country Songs” chart. Hank Snow's, "I'm Moving On" spent 21 weeks at the top.


3. "Kinfolks" (2019)

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Another chart-topper for Hunt. Rolling Stone reviewed the song saying in part, "Acoustic guitar arpeggios that lead into big, bright choruses of banjo, vocal snippets, and wah-wah guitar." Well said.


2. "Leave the Night On" (2014)

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The first song that introduced us to this former football player from Georgia. It was his first single, and his first number one song.


1."Hard to Forget" (2020)

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Just as music critics started saying that Sam just wasn’t country enough, he kicked off a song with an original recording of Webb Pearce’s 1953 hit, “There Stands The Glass.”

Born and raised at Country 1025. Carolyn is a concert-lovin’ country music fan. Plus, an avid New England sports fan. Count Kruser in for standup comedy, movies, and cosmos, but family is #1 for her. Wife, mother of 2- plus Zoey the dog, unpaid cook, cleaner and organizer of chaos. Kruser likes to write about country music, New England lifestyle and trending topics.