CHICAGO -– Walk into Wrigley Field, and it isn’t the rink in shallow centre field that grabs your eye. It is everything else.
It is the hockey banners hanging in the concessions areas under the stands, Chicago Blackhawks players pictured where Chicago Cubs are supposed to be. It is the faux brick on the outside of the rink boards (a nice touch), or the way they plastered the outfield wall with equal parts billboard ads and pictured ivy.
They’ve got snow-making machines in the outfield, for a winter look that’s guaranteed no matter what the weather. And they’ve got an ice plant now -– a real ice plant -– that has taken the Winter Classic from "gimmick" to "staple."
This is the deal, hockey fan: The National Hockey league has finally hit a home run in America, and it’s not going anywhere. This game is a no-doubter, the one game all year with television ratings that are expected to have an impact. And it’ll be there again next year, which is a lot more than you can say for the Phoenix Coyotes.
You knew the NHL had a plan when they went from football stadiums to a baseball park. They gave up some of the 72,000 tickets they’d sold for a game in Ralph Wilson Stadium last year for the intimacy of Wrigleyville, despite the fact they’ll only seat 41,000 and change on Thursday.
As it turns out, Commonwealth Stadium in 2003 was akin to nuclear warhead testing in Siberia. Edmonton was a perfect place to experiment with something that might have been disastrous, and damned if those thick Edmontonians didn’t sit outside for seven hours in temperatures that dive below minus-20 Celsius to make it a success anyhow.
In putting this game in Wrigley Field, they have given hockey fans more than just a game to watch on New Year’s Day. They’ve given them a destination –- let’s see: New Year’s Eve in Buffalo? Or Chicago? -– and they’ve given them something historic.
The first-ever hockey game in Wrigley Field? Cubs nation alone would have filled the seats, and it is suspected those Cubs fans made up a large portion of the 240,000 people who put their names into a draw for the right to buy tickets. Their dollars will help sales of merchandise that are scheduled to double what was sold for the game in Buffalo a year ago.
Next year? Why not the new Yankee Stadium? Or perhaps even Fenway.
And why the baseball parks, you ask?
Well, that is just another reason why this New Year’s Day gig has the look of something we might as well get used to.
The lessons learned in Buffalo last year were mostly about time. Ice maker Dan Craig and his crew didn’t have enough of it, and although the game went off alright, it was a gamble they swore they would not embark upon again.
The problem with using a football stadium at this time of year is that the primary tenant may be in the midst of the most crucial point in this season. Remember, you book the venue a good year in advance, and all you have to do is look at the Miami Dolphins to see the dangers in predicting which National Football League teams are still going to be standing in January.
Baseball stadiums, however, are dead empty at this time of year. That means preparation time, which seriously cuts into the chances of a disaster: cancelling or postponing the game with a full house and a national TV audience waiting for puck drop.
Last year in Buffalo, the NHL’s CEO John Collins said yesterday at Wrigley, was about proving that it could be done and done properly. Craig and his boys pulled it off, but there were some nervous moments.
This year the NHL went out and spent $2 million on a state of the art, portable ice plant. Barring temperatures rising up past about six degrees Celsius on Thursday, the ice at Wrigley Field will be markedly better than the ice the Dallas Stars and Buffalo Sabres contested the 1999 Stanley Cup Final on at the Reunion Arena in Dallas. That Final was dubbed "The Slurpee Cup" due to its brutal ice.
And the seats they’re losing? You can’t charge $250 per ticket to sit in the upper sections in Buffalo.
It’s working, this Winter Classic. Better than the NHL ever could have hoped.
