The Morning Skate: Assessing the Winter Classic

Jonathan Daniel/Getty ImagesChelly weather: Chris Chelios with fans after the game at Wrigley Field on New Year’s Day. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

The second Winter Classic (and the third outdoor regular-season N.H.L. game) is history, and we haven’t come across a negative article on the event. On Yahoo’s Puck Daddy blog, Greg Wyshynski called it “something Gary Bettman hasn’t figured out how to screw up yet.”

A good line, but probably unfair; Bettman gets blamed when things go wrong, even things he has no say over, like the existence of sun belt teams that predate his tenure. But this has gone well, so he and his staff deserve credit.

So do the Blackhawks and especially their president, John McDonough, who pushed hard for this and whose connection with the Cubs made things run more smoothly than they might have otherwise.

But let’s not forget that there’s always going to be an element of uncertainty in these games, namely the weather. Had Wednesday’s conditions, sunny and colder, prevailed on Thursday, the quality of the game might well have been different. Last year, the “snow-globe effect” in Buffalo added to the romance and drama of the game, and perhaps attracted causal viewers. But it also diminished the speed and skill of the contest.

At Wednesday’s practices, the cold temperatures made the ice contract and crack, and the sun glare concerned the players. Fortunately, Thursday brought warmer temps and cloud cover, allowing for a hard-hitting, well-played game on a surface that the players praised as ideal. Still, the unknown of weather conditions will always be a factor in outdoor games.

But all three of the N.H.L.’s open-air matches in recent years have worked out well and, as Kevin Allen wrote in today’s USA Today, “Fans should start to view outdoor hockey as an N.H.L. tradition and not a novelty because these annual games are going to have an extended shelf life. … The Winter Classic has become a major sporting event, a happening that will grow every year as the N.H.L. continues to improve its presentation.”

In a story previewing the game, Steve Keating of Reuters called it “the most important date on the N.H.L. schedule,” which may be true in a certain sense but also overstates things a bit; the Stanley Cup playoffs, especially the final series, remains the apex of hockey and the best example of what the sport delivers in terms of competitiveness, emotion and entertainment. But Keating is right if he’s maintaining the Winter Classic is a far better fixed-date event than the All-Star Game.

When evaluating the importance of yesterday’s Wrigley Field Winter Classic — or any Winter Classic, for that matter — the bottom line is answering the question: How much did it advance the N.H.L.? After all, that is why the league engages in a special event like this. Otherwise, Game 554 on the sked would have just been played at the United Center as the second part of the home-and-away series between the Red Wings and Blackhawks.

On a national audience level, the first yardstick of success is the TV ratings. Bloomberg News reports that the preliminary, overnight ratings, at 2.9, were up 12 percent over last year’s 2.6 overnight figure. Last year’s rating was equal to some college football bowl games and NBC’s best N.H.L. rating of the year. The hope this season was that with two big local audiences — Chicago and Detroit — driving the number, it would surpass the Pittsburgh-Buffalo match-up. Apparently it did, so the appetite for this game on TV is there.

The demand for tickets is a related criterion, and the league says it had nearly a quarter million applicants in the ticket lottery. That says plenty.

The fact that a large chunk of fans couldn’t see the action very well (“About half the Wrigley Field house of 40,818 had a poor view of the rink’s surface for yesterday’s festivities,” writes Kevin Paul Dupont in the Boston Globe in his appeal for more and better jumbo screens at these games) didn’t seem to inhibit either ticket sales or the fans from enjoying the game.

Even this man in photo in The Chicago Tribune , who came from Texas and may have paid $250 for the privilege of sitting a quarter mile away from the ice, looked quite happy.

Pierre McGuire phoned the Morning Skate today and told us that the event “had a carnival atmosphere, it had an N.F.L mentality atmosphere, because of the people around the building who were tailgating long before the game started.” (More from McGuire on the Winter Classic and the World Junior tournament in the Times sports section this coming Sunday.)

On a local level, what this game accomplished for furthering the renaissance of the Blackhawks cannot be measured. Countless stories in the Chicago news media (and here’s a good one on Chairman Rocky Wirtz from Chicago Magazine’s November issue — thanks to our old colleague Michael A. Berger for the link) have referred to how the team is now back on the local sports landscape. The cross-pollination of hockey in a baseball setting fired up Chicagoland; the buzz surrounding the game was omnipresent for months and grew this week to fever pitch.

“The Wrigleyville experience—including the ballpark, the bars, the rooftops and assorted local curiosities—was the main reason this year’s Winter Classic was a true Chicago classic” wrote Tribune Cubs beat writer Paul Sullivan.

“I have pretty lofty and grandiose expectations for everything, and this has surpassed it,” McDonough said in this Chris Kuc Chicago Tribune story. “This city is electrified — our fans have really embraced this. None of us knew what to expect. There’s a hockey game being played on New Year’s Day at Wrigley Field. It’s a special moment. The only way you ever top this is to win the Stanley Cup. That would be the ultimate. We’re privileged to be a part of this.”

It might be on an aesthetic level that this event achieves its largest triumph. The Winter Classic appeals to established hockey fans because it returns the game to its roots, even its Chicago roots, as perhaps no other sport can. And the uniqueness of it, shifting a game from an indoor to an outdoor venue, and having that outdoor venue be a baseball or football stadium (ballparks and college football fields will likely be the preferred venue going forward because there is no chance they’ll be in use) pulls in a broader U.S. audience than for a normal regular-season game indoors.

Frequently, what the N.H.L. does to bring in new fans alienates established fans. And hockey still hasn’t figured out a way to translate what is so special about it on a large scale in the U.S. So for the N.H.L., it is a happy convergence that this event appeals to both the purists and the tourists. It doesn’t solve the larger problem, but it probably gets a good number of newbies interested in the game. That’s a big plus.

And let’s face it, everyone likes a party, and that’s what the Winter Classic is becoming as the clamor for tickets illustrates.

So why is the Winter Classic a crossover success? To a great degree, it is because these games are as much fun for the hockey crowd as college kids and alumni have at their schools’ football games. They may not all be really big fans of the team itself, but they love the atmosphere, the pageantry and the rapport. It’s a big party. Put one of these games on Jan. 1 and you have an extension of the revelry from the New Year’s Eve celebrations. It’s the night before in overtime.

Most comments we’ve seen urge the N.H.L. to approach the future of these games cautiously, one a season, maybe not even every season.

But we have a different thought. Why not more than one a season? As long as it makes sense economically, why not allow a team, as the Oilers did in 2003, to pull together a game at an outdoor venue if it wants?

If this one game merely rotates around the N.H.L. on a yearly basis, lots of fans — and players — will never have the chance to have the outdoor experience. Yes, it might diminish the New Year’s Day event, but there will always be something special about an N.H.L. outdoor game on Jan. 1 amidst the college football bowl games with hungover fans glued to their flatscreens.

(Steve Rosenbloom blogging for the Chicago Tribune wrote yesterday, “I heard some people wondering why the N.H.L. would schedule the Winter Classic on Jan. 1 against all those college bowl games, and I’m thinking, ‘If you’re drooling over Iowa-South Carolina or Clemson-Nebraska, then I think we have the foundation for a federally mandated sterilization program.'”)

Give the Wings and Hawks a rematch in Detroit’s Comerica Park. Let the Flyers and Penguins play annually outdoors in Pa., one year in Philly, the next year in Pitt, and maybe one year in the middle of the state. Why not? Why shouldn’t the Habs and Leafs or Leafs and Sens or Leafs and Sabres play an outdoor game every season? Or the Flames and Oilers have an annual Alberta Classic? These games could be annual matches that fans would anticipate from the day the schedule is released.

There’s probably not a team or fan base in the N.H.L. that wouldn’t want to take part in an outdoor game. Don’t think fans of the Dallas Stars would travel north to Denver or Minnesota for an outdoor game against the Avs or Wild? Think again.

The N.H.L. seems very gung-ho on having lots of teams open their seasons in Europe, but it might do itself, the teams and the fans a favor by rethinking the sparse scheduling of outdoor games here in North America.

Credit Department: As long as we’re praising the league and the Blackhawks for yesterday’s success, let’s keep the record straight on where this all comes from.

Terry Jones of the Edmonton Sun wants us all to remember the man who pioneered outdoor N.H.L. action in the regular season, Oilers C.E.O. Patrick LaForge.

And we should not forget the 1991 preseason game between the Rangers and Kings in 85-degree heat at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas that was plagued by grasshoppers or locusts, the insects mistakenly believing they were in Pharaoh’s Palace (check your Old Testament for that reference).

That game drew 13,000 and, if memory serves, was championed by Kings owner Bruce McNall, although we can’t recall if it was his idea or not. The Kings beat the Rangers 5-2 and many in the stands wore T-shirts and shorts.

The N.H.L. has its own movable ice rink now for the Winter Classic, but Jim Kelley on SI.com has an interesting piece on what happened to last year’s equipment in Buffalo. Worth reading, as all of Kelley’s stuff is.

And, of course, everyone seems to have forgotten the Tampa Bay Lightning played in an unused baseball park now called Tropicana Field the for three seasons, 1993-94 to 1995-96. It wasn’t exactly outdoors, since the place has a roof on it, but it wasn’t a hockey arena either.

Attendance in the Lightning’s first year averaged over 21,000, including 27,227 in the home opener, then an N.H.L. record. They still hold the record for attendance at a Stanley Cup playoff game, 28,183 for the April 23, 1996, game against the Flyers.

Yes, they named the place the Thunderdome for those three season. All the children say….

Comments are no longer being accepted.

You neglect to mention the “Cold War” of 2001 between Michigan State and Michigan, which drew 74,000 fans and probably inspired Edmonton to do what they did.

Hockey fan – Thanks for your comment. I didn’t neglect to mention it. I was just discussing the NHL. And who’s to say that the Cold War wasn’t inspired by the Kings-Rangers game at Caesar’s Palace?

I can think of something that might make this game even more interesting and distinctive: use an international-size rink. IMHO the NHL would be a lot more interesting if they used the larger rink all the time, as it puts a premium on skating and passing. Unfortunately, modern arenas are not built for the extra 15 feet of width, but this is obviously no problem when playing these outdoor matches. And it would get the game that much closer to the spectators.

Marko – Thanks for your comment. There has been much debate in the past few years about the size of the NHL ice surface (200 x 85), especially because players have grown larger since the game’s rules were established. Some believe as you that the international-sized sheet (200 x 100) would put skill more front and center, others contend it would take the physical element out of the game. And still others think something in between would be the best solution. Personally, I don’t find the current NHL size a detriment to the game, and I think it forces the players to react more quickly, which speaks to their high degree of athleticism. But that’s just my opinion.

However, I don’t think that extending the width of the rink would ultimately matter much when it comes to helping spectators in a baseball stadium, with seating that is only on a slight incline, see the game better. This is a downside to using baseball stadiums, which the NHL says it now prefers for outdoor games (since they have better access to the building than in football stadiums, which are in use while the NHL is assembling all they need to assemble). Merely spreading out the ice surface won’t change their sight lines very much.

As a rabid (and cable-, center ice-less) hockey fan, I was certainly thrilled by the Classic, as i would have been thrilled by any televised hockey on New Year’s Day. I’m glad the spectacle offered enough novelty for NBC to trot out the A production team, and for McDonough to bring in all the old familiar faces, and I’m certainly glad for the attention to the league and to the game.

However, I have to temper my enthusiasm a bit, as I’ve seen now in my 15 years of fandom a series of short-sighted gimmicks come and go that fail to bring any lasting boost to the game. You’re correct to point out that the thrill of the WC pales in comparison to the heights of a Game 7 in the Stanley Cup finals (or in any prior series, for that matter). When you strip away all of the pomp, this was just a regular season game. It did offer some beautiful moments (Datsyuk’s flight to the net, Ben Eager’s retro celebration), but it lacked the passion, suspense, sacrifice, and strategy which are all on display in any playoff game. This is not to mention NBC’s glaring omission of any analysis that would have brought these to the average viewer’s attention.

If it means increased ratings, ticket and merch sales, by all means continue the Winter Classic, but it wont go too far to increase people’s awareness of what makes the game truly great like more, better playoff coverage would. I agree with you, though, that more of these games should be played whenever possible if teams and venues are able to put them together. Surely, venues exist in cold-weather, hockey-rabid cities (ie, not NHL cities) that can offer a more suitable, even ideal viewing experience compared to Wrigley. This would be a revenue generator, in addition to restoring a legitmacy to the outdoor game as a natural part of hockey, and beyond a serial gimmick.

I am 62 years old and can remember when the 1960 US Hockey team beat the Soviets. It was much more signifcant than the 1980 win. No one anticipated this happening and there was literally limited media coverage of this historic event. Video tape was not widely used then. Even though the Classic is about a professional game let us honor the upcoming 50th aniversary by hosting the Winter Classic in at the Squaw Valley venue.