The Winter Classic…Fenway Park

The Green Monster and Fenway Park are not your typical setting for a hockey game, but that is exactly what will take place this coming New Years’ Day.  For the NHL, the Winter Classic has been a gold mine of sorts bringing new fans to the game, and tv ratings that haven’t been seen for hockey games in far too long.  The past two have been at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo and this past year at Wrigley Park in Chicago and were viewed as wildly successful.  Bringing hockey to an open air environment has so much upside and for the most part little downside involved.  If this is an event that the NHL can manage to recreate in some form or another each year, thereby not running the risk of overuse this may become the foundation of the return of the NHL to national consciousness.

Boston Herald Graphic

The odd part about this whole thing is the speculation that the opponents being debated between are the Philadelphia Flyers and the Washington Capitals.  Clearly, I would never dream of belittling the team of my current city and the Flyers and Bruins do have a fairly big rivalry, but I just don’t see it.  The management of the Boston Bruins has been pushing for this game pretty much since its inception and the thought was always that this would be an Original 6 game.  It only seems appropriate, Boston has one of the most storied franchises in the sport and why would you not want to pit them against one of their oldest and fiercest rivals for an event of this magnitude.

I understand the rationale behind putting the most exciting player in the whole sport onto the sport’s largest stage.  But in some respects the rivalry in itself should be enough of a draw, although admittedly I am probably not the target demographic for the NHL.  Watching fans at games, every time Alexander Ovechkin touches the puck there is a palpable excitement running through the crowd.  With that in mind, I can imagine my friends watching the game explicitly because the Great 8 is in the game and tangentially because it is a cool event, hockey outdoors in Fenway Park.  Obviously, not your typical hockey game.   The league obviously has a strategy behind the cities they choose for this games and the teams they ask to play in the Winter Classic.  Since they are so adamant about bringing the young guns to the forefront of the game then there could be no better choice than the Washington Capitals.  I truly hope that when all is said and done that the Boston Bruins are facing the Washington Capitals at Fenway Park in Boston on January 1st, 2010.

How do you say no to a man that can sing and dance like this…

Especially when he can do something like this…

I guess I understand why the NHL is leaning away from the Bruins and the Canadiens and to a team with that man on it.