The NFL owns American Thanksgiving, with several featured football games on a late November Thursday. The NBA has taken on Santa for Christmas Day focus, providing a full day of major basketball rivalries, allowing all the star teams to play one another on one big day. Both holidays are very special, but the sports games are just like any other regular season game, on a day where the focus is far from sport. Only professional hockey has started something that is not only different, but also exciting. Every New Year’s Day since 2008, the NHL has hosted the Winter Classic, a single game played outdoors in the dead of winter. While all leagues have found success with their special sporting days, only the NHL has created something different, something exciting, and not diluted the event to take away from the moment.
There are three major reasons why the NHL has outdone the other major sporting leagues with the Winter Classic.
The NHL hosting the traditional Winter Classic every New Year’s Day is perfect because not only is it a National Holiday all around the world, but the day is not a special day in itself. The true festivities of the New Year happen on New Year’s Eve, allowing January 1st to act as a full day of recovery. This allows people to be at home with little required to do with family or friends, especially in comparison with Thanksgiving or Christmas. Thanksgiving is a busy day with family visiting and cooking, and thus the focus can be less about football and more about family togetherness. Certain football fans do get to watch the game together as a family, a nice treat so long as the hectic nature of the day doesn’t consume them. Basketball fans have to compete with Christmas Day, the biggest of all holidays. Not only are people playing with their new toys and gadgets, but there is much preparation to be done in terms of cooking. Families will have little time to sit down and actively watch the game, unless the non-basketball fans decide to prepare everything as a selfless gesture during the season of giving. The NHL got it right here. New Year’s Day is the one day where sports fans can really get together with the full day off with no family gatherings and no expectations.
Another reason why the NHL Winter Classic provides more excitement than other holiday sporting events is because there is only one game that day. There is only one focus, and that stops the day from being diluted in a multitude of games. The NFL traditionally had only a single game every Thanksgiving featuring the Detroit Lions. However, the ineptitude of the Lions’ football organisation during the entirety of this century has forced the schedulers to add a few games to pad the excitement of this special football day. The NBA Christmas rivalry began once Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, two players who together won 3 consecutive NBA Championships with the Los Angeles Lakers, parted ways because they could no longer play in the shadow of the other. Christmas Day turned into the traditional Shaq vs. Kobe, while O’Neal moved from Miami to Cleveland and was scheduled to play his rival on three separate Christmas Days spanning 2003 to 2009. As Shaq’s dominance has fallen during his aging process, this year Kobe will face off against the biggest name in basketball, Lebron James. As exciting as this game is, there will be a total of five games this Christmas Day starting at noon. There’s little doubt that any true fan will be able to watch at least parts of every game, but it’s a shame that one cannot watch every single one of these marquee matchups. Christmas is just too busy to expect one can watch over 12 hours of basketball. The NHL Winter Classic has been, and will always be, one single game for the New Year. The main reason is that it’s just too impractical to prepare multiple massive outdoor stadiums for a hockey game. The costs and man power involved in preparing a stadium for a massive outdoor hockey game would be lost if one tried to oversell the niche product with multiple games. The one game, whether it is a team you support or not, will be the focus because of the event in itself, and that fact that there’s only one like it every year makes it special.
And the truest reason why the Winter Classic is special is because the game is different. The game is outdoors in the freezing cold and the winter elements create a different environment and playing surface for the players. The hockey stars must overcome the cold, the wind, and, weather providing, the snow. The rebuilt outdoor stadium holds a lot more fans than any stadium too. The 2008 version of the Winter Classic held in Buffalo brought in more than 72,000 fans at Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. More fans create for an atmosphere with more grandeur. The games from the NFL and NBA are just like any other game on any other day: same stadiums, same fans, same atmosphere. The only difference is that the top teams are purposely scheduled to compete on these days. The NBA has experimented with outdoor games, but the weather conditions of wind and rain (or snow) could completely nullify any basketball skills that can be put on display. If whether conditions could be perfect, the NBA would surely love an outdoor game, but one cannot control the weather. The NHL embraces the fluctuating elements (sometimes even encourages it), and that’s what can make the Winter Classic so special.
So while every sport has its special day to showcase their talents, on the NHL creates something new, something special, and most importantly something memorable. And this New Year’s Day, when Sidney Crosby and his Pittsburgh Penguins host the Washington Capitals, led by their starlet Alexander Ovechkin, hockey fans and sports fans alike will be treated to something that no other sport can provide: a game that promises to be yet another Winter Classic.
aa.
No comments:
Post a Comment