Remember back to 2008 when Sam Flood and NBC Sports had that
brilliant idea to play an outdoor hockey game on New Year’s Day? People thought
they were absolutely crazy, pointing out that the first day of the year was exclusively
the domain of college football, with some early bowl games leading into the
venerable Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena and one other BCS contest following that.
Not to be deterred, NBC and the National Hockey League
pushed ahead, and the Winter Classic was born. The first game, between Pittsburgh
and Buffalo at Ralph Wilson Stadium (home of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills) was an
instant hit. Yes, Edmonton and Montreal played a few years before, but without
as much impact. The inaugural Winter Classic was the type of event that hockey
fans had never seen before on as grand a scale as we saw that day.
I remember the day well: it was hockey in a snow globe, with
fans bundled up against the cold, commentators calling the game from a wooden
structure erected in the middle of the field, weather forecasters giving live
reports on the comings and goings of the snowstorm that had settled over
Buffalo. Then, the league’s most marketable star, Sidney Crosby, won the game
in a dramatic, snow-filled shootout. It was ratings gold, and the novelty of an
outdoor contest got eyeballs tuning into NBC. And so a tradition was born.
Fast forward to 2013, and the NHL has seen a string of
successful Winter Classic events: Chicago and Detroit renewed their blood
rivalry at Wrigley Field, Boston and Philadelphia went to overtime at Fenway
Park, Washington and Pittsburgh played under lights at Heinz Field in
Pittsburgh after a weather delay, and the New York Rangers survived a late
penalty shot to beat Philadelphia at Citizens Bank Park.
On New Year’s Day, the biggest and most audacious of all
Winter Classic events took place, for the first time featuring a Canadian team,
as the Toronto Maple Leafs played the Detroit Red Wings inside Michigan
Stadium. You know, the Big House: the mammoth venue where the University of
Michigan’s football plays during fall and routinely draws over 105,000, and
managed an all-time record of 115,109 for a game between Michigan and Notre
Dame in September of 2013.
The game, as I wrote in an earlier article, was a phenomenal
success and I enjoyed every second of the snowy spectacle. I’m not alone. TV
ratings were giant, with overnights equalling the best ever return for a
regular season hockey game in America – the 2009 Winter Classic at Wrigley, if
you were wondering.
More than that, the NHL will likely own the record for the
best-attended hockey game ever, with an attendance of more than 105,000 and
Toronto become the first Canadian team to win on what is arguably hockey’s
greatest stage. The game, short on breakneck speed due to continuous snow – it
isn’t easy to push a puck through piles of snow – was hailed as a tremendous
event. Once again, the Winter Classic has delivered in spades.
Normally, we’d be discussing the great success of another
outdoor New Year’s Day game and looking ahead to next year’s contest, this
year, perhaps, pondering how the NHL can deliver a bigger spectacle in 2015
after packing out the biggest stadium in North America during the middle of a
blizzard.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a normal hockey year. Outdoor
games will be on the radar for much longer to come, because the NHL, not for
the first time showing questionable wisdom, have scheduled in five more outdoor
games in what they’re calling the NHL Stadium Series.
On January 25, the Los Angeles Kings will face off against
the Anaheim Ducks at Dodger Stadium. A day later, New York Rangers will skate
on a rink at Yankee Stadium against the New Jersey Devils, and, three days
after that, will play the New York Islanders at the same venue. Then, on the
first day of March, Pittsburgh and Chicago will play at Chicago’s venerable
Soldier Field. The last game of the series takes place on March 2, a renewal of
the Heritage Classic, with Ottawa playing Vancouver at BC Place in Vancouver.
Additionally, there are – and have already been,
particularly in the lead-up to the Winter Classic at Comerica Park in downtown
Detroit – a number of junior, minor league and college games taking place in
outdoor venues.
That’s too much outdoor hockey.
A bold statement to make, especially from me, a hockey
lover, and I’d hate for you to get me wrong on this, so I’ll explain.
I love the romance of an outdoor game. Anyone who’s ever
laced them up and skated outdoors understands the amazing feeling of freedom
you get, and given that most – if not all – of the current crop of NHL players
would have started playing hockey on frozen ponds or lakes with their friends until
their mothers called them in for dinner well before organised and regimented
indoor hockey took over.
You know what else? I love watching the game go back to it’s
deepest roots. I love the pictures from the blimp overhead, I love the
ancillary rinks with the youngsters skating, and I love the way that these
outdoor games bring much-needed publicity to the NHL, which is barely a blip on
the national sporting radar at the best of times. The Winter Classic has
brought hockey to the fore on a day when college football used to dominate.
What the NHL is doing – and what I disagree with – is
running a dangerous risk of diluting their product. Yes, they’ve hit on
something that’s popular with fans, sells a whole new round of merchandise and
puts the NHL front-and-centre on SportsCentre rather than being buried at the
very back end, but instead of carefully protecting this product, they’ve gone
ahead and stacked the schedule with another five games.
Memo, Commissioner Gary Bettman: this is too much. Sluggish
ticket sales in Southern California and New York City is proof that the fan
base is apathetic about these outdoor games. The drama or excitement of playing
outdoors just isn’t there when you’re the third or fourth game in less than a
month. There’s only so much hype that you can toss at these events, and it
doesn’t take a genius to see that bad ticket sales are a definite sign that
people are tiring of the concept.
If you keep shoving it down their throats, the signature product
– the Winter Classic – is going to suffer, too. Then, where will you be? No one
wants to see the New Year’s Day outdoor game go from the biggest regular season
moment the sport knows to something that can no longer stand up in amongst a
group of usually-good college football games here.
Diluting the product aside, for mine, the real crux of the
matter here, of why six outdoor games in a season is far too much, is simple:
the quality of hockey being played. Let’s be honest, as good as the sheet of
ice is at these outdoor games, it’s nowhere near as good as what you get in
even the worst NHL arena, so the quality of play is somewhat lessened.
For the
sake of a ratings bonanza/spectacle once a year that draws fresh eyeballs to
the game, most diehard fans are going to forgive a substandard game, but five
times in a season? No, not at all.
Real fans want a smooth, fast sheet of ice and the skills
that awe us on a regular basis. You just don’t get that outdoors – especially
not when you’re playing through the very heart of a blizzard – so the speed of
the game, one of it’s real draws, is diminished. As is the ability of a goalie
to make a highlight reel save. Today, in
the snow, at times it was as much as Jimmy Howard or Jonathan Bernier could do
to locate the puck. By hook or by crook is definitely not how you want your
goalie operating.
Outdoor hockey means sacrificing the best parts of the game
once a year for the sake of spectacle and ceremony, but true hockey fans don’t
deserve it six times in the space of eight weeks. They deserve a no-holds-barred
contest, the fastest team sport on the face of the earth, which, unfortunately,
you just can’t get on an outdoor sheet of ice.
Unfortunately, the League doesn’t realise that – or, more
likely, doesn’t care. They want to make money quickly, and an outdoor game, as
I mentioned above, is a serious money-spinner. After the lockout, you’d imagine
that the NHL coffers are a little lower than usual, which could be a part of
why these games are going on. Or, perhaps the NHL thinks that the fans really
want them. Hell, it wouldn’t be the first time the League’s front office has
drastically misread the temperature of the fan base. And, let’s be honest, it
probably won’t be the last, either.
There’s no going back for this 2014 NHL Stadium Series.
Empty seats or not, the next five games will go ahead. It may look bad for the
League, both in terms of television ratings and embarrassing shots of clumps of
empty seats when cameras pan around Dodger Stadium or Yankee Stadium, but
there’s nothing that can be done now. Let’s hope that Commissioner and his
people have noticed this apathy and cuts back on these outdoor games for the
2015 season.
And that’s the last thing that the NHL needs.
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