This event was a home run for Calgary, it was a 7-game playoff series in a Grey Cup-like weekend.
CALGARY — The ice was awful, the cold biting, and in the end the Heritage Classic simply couldn’t have been more wildly successful.
Perhaps we’re being too hard on the National Hockey League’s most nervous employee this week, ice maker Dan Craig.
"The ice wasn’t terrible," Jarome Iginla was saying afterwards.
In the end, through six of these outdoor contests, we’ve learned many things. First and foremost, the NHL can’t have it all.
Do you want hard-hitting, crisp passing hockey on pretty good ice? Or do you want a massive, feel-good hockey festival with 41,022 fans?
You clearly can’t have both.
"You try to be physical, but it’s difficult in a situation like that," Flames defenceman Cory Sarich said after his team’s 4-0 dismantling of a spiraling Montreal Canadiens squad. "You respect your opponent because it is cold and guys are a little stiff, the physical part of the game isn’t quite there. You’re not trying to go easy on a guy, but…"
As an event, this was a home run for Calgary. It was as if you took a seven-game playoff series and compressed it inside one Grey Cup-like weekend.
As a game, the Heritage was no Classic. It was more like an All-Star game in its lack of physicality, as both teams boiled their game down to a north-south effort simply because they had such little trust in the ice. They were often times afraid to make a 10-foot pass.
"For sure, there’s less contact," Iginla said. "The ice wasn’t good around the boards. We all want to play hard, but you could catch a toe going in there… You don’t want to see anyone get hurt."
In effect, these outdoor games have become like a second or third All-Star game each season. It’s a celebration of hockey, where the celebration outweighs the hockey.
With two points on the line, this game was of course better than what we saw in Raleigh a few weeks back. But on this ice, it was played at roughly 70 per cent the skill level of the same game played inside the Scotiabank Saddledome.
As NHL commissioner Gary Bettman stood behind the post-game podium, his red cheeks making it look like he just got in from an afternoon of tobogganing, he could not speak to the future of these games.
Specifically, how do they find the balance between meeting the vast appetite for this event from the 20-or so NHL teams that can actually freeze an outdoor sheet of ice, while not wearing out the uniqueness of the outdoor event?
"That’s a terrific question, and it’s one that we’ve been debating internally and actually doing a lot of research on," Bettman said. "Some of the preliminary research we’ve seen says our fans want more of these. They don’t care how many of these there are as long as they get one."
The Winter Classic, because of its New Year’s Day marriage with NBC, has become an American teams only event and not just any American teams. Major hockey markets need only apply.
The Heritage Classic or Winter Classic lite has so far it has covered off the league’s Canadian teams, but eventually it could take care of less sexy US markets like Columbus, Minnesota.
Clearly, as the novelty of the games wear off on the average hockey fan, these games become simply a great local story. Like an All-Star weekend, this game took over Calgary this past week, raising a ton of money along the way.
So what if people who don’t have a vested rooting interest tuned in and saw a bunch of NHLers gingerly trying to navigate poor ice and after a few minutes switched channels over to the golf?
"I can’t imagine having a better execution, a better outcome, happier fans and a better showcase for the game," said a beaming Flames president Ken King, whose organization was taxed in hosting this game. "It’s a long process and there are some times during that process where you say Holy cow, is this what we want? Or is this a distraction? Until you get to this day and then you say, everything was worth it, all the work and all the effort by everyone."
"It was totally worth it."
So if your question is, how many of these things can the league have? You just got your answer.
Perhaps a better question is: How many markets are there where you can freeze a sheet of ice?
And even that doesn’t appear to be much of a priority.
