The Ice Sheet: Reflections on the Winter Classic

Every Monday morning The Ice Sheet will take a close look at everything that's happened in the NHL since Friday night at 5:00 p.m. -- or if need be, anything else the author wants to bleat about. To read them all, click here.

Though it's been almost four days since I left Wrigley Field under cover of darkness -- the above shot was one last look I took for posterity before heading for Gate K and an idling shuttle bus on Waveland Avenue sometime around 5:30 p.m. on Thursday evening -- it's clear that the 2009 NHL Winter Classic is going to be sticking with me for a very long time. Later in the day, my colleagues here at the NHL side of FanHouse are going to be sharing their own thoughts on the event and its future, but before that happens I'd like to share some thoughts about what I saw and heard over the three incredible days I spent at Wrigley Field.
Did you ever get the chance to skate on the outfield at Wrigley? ... As someone who grew up as a rabid fan of the New York Mets, I watched countless afternoon games between the Cubs and Mets on WOR-TV in New York as a child. My favorite memory from those days has to be of watching Dave Kingman hit a home run completely out of the park, and then seeing the ball bounce in the middle of Sheffield Avenue and shatter a window across the street. Having grown up with memories like that, it seemed more than a little odd that it was a hockey game that finally got me inside one of the greatest cathedrals in all of baseball.

As I skated on the ice surface on Tuesday afternoon in the brilliant sunshine, I made a vow to come back when the temperature was somewhere above 70 degrees. Though to tell you the truth, I think I'm going to have a hard time believing that the place could be any more beautiful than it was on January 1, blanketed in snow and filled with better than 40,000 delirious hockey fans. On that day it felt more like home than any barn I'd ever been in before.

At one level or another, the game was incidental ... Only a few minutes after taking my seat in the warm and comfortable Wrigley Press Box, I came to the conclusion that it might have been the worst place to understand exactly what was going on at the ballpark that day. Sure, I can understand why the vast majority of the press stayed indoors watching every last bounce of the puck. After all, reporting on those details was the reason they were getting paid to be there. But for me, I couldn't help but think that the real story was out in the elements with the 42,000 plus fans who were filling the seats.

For me, one of the great joys of sports blogging was getting to know the folks who read your stuff. For one reason or another -- comment spam being the culprit in my case -- I lost touch with a lot of the folks who helped make my original sports blog a success. But getting back out into the elements and talking to the folks watching the game helped me reconnect with that same sort of crowd -- like these two guys who engaged in some premature jocularity after the end of the first period with the Blackhawks leading 3-1:



It's that sort of surprise moment that's been missing from my sports blogging experience for some time. Thanks to those two guys I got it back.

The NHL finally got something right -- and deserves the credit for it ... I arrived at Wrigley Field on Thursday morning well in advance of game time, taking more than a little while to walk around the perimeter of the stadium and take in the scene. What struck me was the fact that I popped out of a cab on Clark Street a few minutes before 9:00 a.m. local time -- more than three hours before the puck was scheduled to drop -- and the crowds had already started to arrive even though it would be another hour before they could get inside. That's the sort of buzz that you usually only see associated with the NFL, and the league deserves a lot of credit for creating that same sort of feeling around a hockey game, even if it was only for a day.

Tell me, just how do you top that? ... On so many levels, Chicago and the NHL Winter Classic were the perfect match. We had two Original Six rivals playing outdoors on what may be the world's most famous baseball infield in the quintessential middle American city. Outside of a midgame snow squall, you really couldn't ask for much more.

But here's the good news/bad news proposition: Now that the league has hit such an incredible home run with the 2009 edition of the Winter Classic, it has no choice but to make the game an annual event. And now that it is, the question becomes where do you go next?

Granted, it's a good problem to have. Right on the top of the list has to be either the new Yankee Stadium or Boston's Fenway Park. For some, going to another baseball stadium could easily strike you as a case of "been there" and "done that." But after spending an afternoon at Wrigley, I'm more than convinced that the individual character of every city would provide more than enough personality to make the next Winter Classic a great experience.

Yes, at some point a couple of years into the future, the league will probably run out of logical venues to hold the event -- though when I asked Nicklas Lidstrom if he would be up for playing outside in Stockholm, his eyes lit up like he was a little kid. If we get to the point where the Winter Classic runs out of gas, then so be it. When the time comes we'll be sure to give it a rest then. But until that time comes, we all ought to just sit back and enjoy the run.