Winter Classic: More Than Just a Money Maker

The NHL announced on Thursday that the 6th installment of their annual Winter Classic would take place on New Years Day of next year in Detroit, Michigan. Detroit’s own Red Wings are slated to take on their Original Six rivals, the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Why Outdoors?

The Winter Classic has been everything the league could have imagined since it’s inaugural game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Buffalo Sabres at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo in 2008. That game produced a shootout, and fans were left with the image of Penguins star leaping through the snow after scoring the game winner.

The game was seen as an opportunity for the NHL to retain some of the popularity it had lost since the league locked out for the 2004-2005 season, and indeed it’s worked. Records have been broken for viewership of a regular season NHL game each season. But for most of the players, playing outside in an NHL game has brought their careers full circle. Many of the league’s players are either Canadian or American, and a large portion of them started skating on outdoor rinks and ponds in their hometowns as young boys.

On Long Island there is a shortage of outdoor rinks and children are relegated to playing inline hockey at facilities like SkateSafe. Photo: Andrew Capitelli

What it Means for the Players

During pre-game interviews for the event, players can be heard describing their fondest memories playing on backyard rinks. The fun they discovered with their friends, as they played until their toes went numb, shows a love for the game unseen in any modern day sport.

This is hockey in it’s most pure form, and although the league may capitalize on the event commercially, the game lets players get back to their roots and, above all, is a celebration of the game fans and players fell in love with.

For those who cannot experience the thrill of outdoor ice hockey, there are training balls that imitate the feeling of stick handling with a puck. Photo: Andrew Capitelli