1. The Kings look set for a deep playoff run. Both teams currently sit outside looking in as far as tickets to the Western Conference playoffs go, but the Kings’ win tonight was their seventh straight, and after a slow start to the season, they finally look like the team that won the Stanley Cup last year.
Looking down their roster as it sits, and despite a few depth issues defensively, there’s plenty to like. Jonathan Quick is back to his old self in goal, star D-man Drew Doughty is playing about half an hour a game, and then there’s Marian Gaborik. He’s as streaky as they come, but when he’s hot, he’s red-hot. Just ask Kings fans about how Gabby caught fire. His game-winning goal was vintage Gaborik. If he can somehow unleash form like he did last year in leading the Kings to glory, watch out.
2. Two outdoor games worked well this year. The gap between the New Year’s Day Winter Classic and the Stadium Series contest on Saturday evening was just long enough to keep the two separate, and to create a little anticipation. That anticipation led to a sold-out crowd at Levis Stadium. For a non-traditional market, that’s no small thing.
Last year’s schedule was choked with games in early February – a lot of that was to do with Super Bowl Week in New York, where the NHL scheduled two outdoor games at Yankee Stadium – and I personally was bouncing from one to the next without really knowing the difference. The League is clearly trying to market these as special events, so the separation between Nationals Park on January 1 and Levis Stadium on February 21 was great.
The crowd, which numbered more than 70,000 (more than has yet attended a 49ers game, for what it’s worth) probably didn’t like the result – it was a pro-San Jose group – but the experience in basically a brand-new stadium was unparalleled. Importantly, also, it looked great on television.
Next year, there’ll be three outdoor games – the New Year’s Day Winter Classic between Boston and Montreal, and two Stadium Series games – and that will I’m willing to give the NHL the benefit of the doubt as far as scheduling goes. Given that three of the participants next year have never played a Stadium Series or Winter Classic game, the buzz should be large. Especially on New Year’s Day when the B’s and Habs get into it at the Foxboro, Massachusetts home of the New England Patriots.
3. Los Angeles and San Jose deserved their appearances. Yes, the Kings played an outdoor game last year, but the fact that they are Stanley Cup champions was a good enough reason to put them into this one. San Jose were equally deserving. They’ve been there or thereabouts at the top of the Western Conference for many seasons now, before the emergence of the Kings as year-in-year-out Stanley Cup contenders, and have carved out a nice niche market in San Jose. This was their reward.
4. Arctic conditions aren’t necessary to make an outdoor game work. Those days are long gone, simply because he NHL are so proficient at making nice ice wherever they go. Dan Craig’s team has had plenty of time to master the art of the process, and proved last year, when the Kings and Ducks played at Dodger Stadium, that they could make a sheet of ice capable of having good hockey played on it outside of cold-weather environments.
I accept that the quality of the ice is obviously not going to the same as if Saturday night’s game had been played at Staples Centre in Los Angeles or SAP Centre in San Jose (as does everyone), but considering the relatively warm weather on the west coast, Craig’s team did a good job. It was an eminently playable surface, probably not much worse than an arena rink in late May or early June – the ice at Madison Square Garden is definitely suspect at that time of the year.
It seems that the quality of ice at these outdoor games gets better and better each time one is staged, not just because of increased technology, but because of the ability of the team building the rink. I’m often quick to criticise the NHL when they do something wrong, but they deserve compliments for the surface tonight.
5. John Fogerty might be nearly 70, but he can still sing. The former front man for Creedence Clearwater Revival, and a Bay Area resident, played a medley of his biggest hits during the first period intermission. He was better than Billy Idol and Lee Greenwood, who did the same thing at the Winter Classic in Washington D.C., and the cringe factor, normally high in these intermission gigs, was in the negative.
The NHL really outdid themselves in the first period, but Melissa Etheridge was an interesting choice for the second. So the League wanted locals? What, the Counting Crows and Train were busy?
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