The two main questions being asked at the Winter Classic are 'will the ice be bad?' and 'what about the cold?' Enough already.

CHICAGO -– In a league where they play nightly on ice that can’t hold a candle to surfaces at local arenas across Canada, the breathless question most asked here at the Winter Classic is whether the Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings will be forced to play on (shudder) bad ice Thursday afternoon.

And in a winter sport whose roots are in ice and snow, the second most popular question is, “What about the cold?”

Enough already.

It’s hockey. It’s winter. The two go together, remember?

“You know, two teams are going to play on the same sheet of ice, and it’s going to be the same for both of us,” said Detroit coach Mike Babcock. “Sometimes the puck isn’t going to bounce the way it is supposed to, but that’s part of the event. You have to find a way to get the two points.”

“Once you get a little bit frost-bitten out there,” added Chicago defenceman Brian Campbell, “then you’re fine.”

In ’03 in Edmonton, the ice was so bad and the air so cold (minus-20 when the sun set during the first period), that an unspoken rule was struck between players from the Montreal Canadiens and Edmonton Oilers: You don’t hit me, and I won’t hit you.

Last year in Buffalo wasn’t much better. The Pittsburgh Penguins and Buffalo Sabres leveled nary a blow in a snowy no-hitter at Ralph Wilson Stadium.

This year, the National Hockey League has a four-pointer between the first place Red Wings and the only team in the Central Division with a prayer of reeling them in. Chicago enters the game six points back, after Detroit cleaned the Blackhawks’ clock by a score of 4-0 Tuesday night in Motown.

Surely, those are the ingredients for an outdoor game played with some ill intent, no?

“I think the atmosphere will be a lot more intense this year,” said Campbell, who was on the Sabres’ blue line in last year’s Winter Classic. “Just because it’s so compact. The seats are closer. It’s not as far away.”

“They’re 3-0 against us this year. We’ve got a statement to make,” said Patrick Kane, whose appearance in the game will be iffy due to a bad ankle. “We think we’re this great team, and they beat us pretty good [Tuesday] night.”

And so goes the biggest problem for the Blackhawks in this Winter Classic.

For them, it has been much anticipated. There is much expectation, and the eyes of the hockey world will be on Wrigley Field on New Year’s Day.

The problem? Detroit is feeling exactly the same way.

“I can tell you,” began Babcock, “for a group like ours – a veteran group that’s been through what we’ve been through the last year and a half – it’s something to get excited about.”

You know that syndrome that lays low recent Stanley Cup winners? Well, you might not know it by Detroit’s 24-7-5 record, but Babcock is struggling with motivation a bit this winter.

“The National Hockey League is like Groundhog Day. It wears you out, and that’s a great thing, because the mentally tough survive,” he said. “I know when you’ve [won the Cup], you’re not as pumped every night as you’d like to be. Something like this gets you excited. I know we’re excited to play.”

Great. The best team in hockey – sorry San Jose and Boston – and they are “excited to play.”

That the Blackhawks are young, spry, and ultra talented may just give us the ingredients we need for a Winter Classic that can stand on its own as entertainment. The past two have been all atmosphere, but no game.

If this one has the game to match the feeling one gets seeing a hockey rink inside venerable Wrigley Field, it will indeed be a day to remember.