For the  past few years, Metallica have been branching out into the sports world. They’ve had annual nights with the past two years with the San Francisco Giants, which they’ll be doing again in 2015. They’ve also played Yankee Stadium twice – as part of the Big 4 and for Mariano Rivera’s retirement ceremony. Now they’re expanding to the NHL. The band announced that on January 21 of next year, the San Jose Sharks will have Metallica Night as they take on the LA Kings. Here’s what the band said about it on their website:

We’re excited to add to the ever expanding sports action nights by announcing that we will be getting together with our good friends the San Jose Sharks on January 21, 2015 as they take on their rivals the LA Kings for a night of Metalli-hockey mayhem… what’s that we hear you say? “ANOTHER Bay Area Metallica-sports tie-in?” Well, as some of you may know, we have been long supporters of the Sharks going back to the mid-90’s when the team moved permanently to San Jose… over the years we’ve made many treks down to the Shark Tank. So it’s actually pretty fitting that we finally connect with the team for a night of metal and hockey and we want you to come along and partake of the festivities with us. We’ll be on hand for the first strains of “Seek & Destroy,” kick off the game with the puck drop, and partake in some of the intermission fun and games that Sharks fans know and love.

So come be a part of the NHL action with us and treat yourselves to some pretty cool ice hockey in the process. Special Metallica Night tickets go on sale this Wednesday, December 17th at 10:00 AM PST and include a Metalli-Sharks shirt with a portion of the sales benefiting the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club. Be sure to purchase the special event ticket here at sharks.nhl.com in order to also receive the shirt.

Fan Club members should log in for details about a special pre-sale for them.

The shirt design, done by SQUINDO, is pretty rad, especially if you like Metallica, hockey or sharks. The best thing about the announcement is probably the picture that they included of James Hetfield with Sharks defenseman Brent Burns, though.