Looking ahead … and back at the Winter Classic

The Pittsburgh Penguins held a joint press conference today at Heinz Field with the Washington Capitals and the Pittsburgh Steelers to promote the 2011 Winter Classic.  The event, a regular season NHL game, will be held on New Year’s Day between the Pens and Caps in Pittsburgh at Heinz Field, home of the Steelers.  On hand for the announcement from the Penguins were players Maxime Talbot, Pascal Dupuis and Sidney Crosby as well as team officials including co-owner Mario Lemieux, president David Morehouse and GM Ray Shero.

Morehouse noted that the Winter Classic will not just be one NHL game but instead, “a week full of events, a week long celebration of Pittsburgh and hockey in Pittsburgh.  [We will be] celebrating high school hockey, college hockey as well as the Winter Classic.”  He went on to thank the Steelers and then the Penguins for making Pittsburgh a hockey town.  “With the help of Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby and all of the players over the past few years on the Penguins, and the official announcement of hosting the Winter Classic, Pittsburgh has now become a hockey town and will always be a hockey town.”

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It is interesting to note that the winner of the first three Winter Classics (Pittsburgh ’08, Detroit ’09, Philadelphia ’10) went on to become the losing team in that season’s Stanley Cup Final.

Cynicism reigned in my brain when the Penguins last participated in the Winter Classic three years ago on New Year’s Day, 2008 in Buffalo.  Yet my opinion on the whole concept of an outdoor game changed 180 degrees as that game progressed.  Yes, there was risk of injury; yes, the playing conditions were unnatural, but it was a great spectacle.  The following are my thoughts on that game, originally written in a now-defunct personal, general-interest blog, twenty-four hours after Crosby slipped the puck through Ryan Miller’s pads to end the shootout.  Funny how Crosby seems to put the puck past Miller for game-winning goals when extraordinarily large numbers of people are watching on television.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008 – 7.38pm – “This is why I love winter”

Rare but welcome are the moments in life when some event, person or entity unexpectedly rekindles a time of innocence and unsullied recreation. I am a proud Pittsburgh Penguins hockey supporter cursed to dwell in an acidic blue sea of mouth-breathing, zombie-like Maple Leaf fans in the city of Toronto. Naturally, my exposure to Leaf information is unavoidable due to the Emmanuel Goldstein-like braying from three national cable television sports networks and the local all sports radio station.

Unashamedly, I spent hours upon hours last week on my brief Christmas break digging up every last scrap of Penguins intelligence on pittsburghpenguins.com. Penguin game stories, Penguin statistics, Penguin ringtones, Penguin wallpaper, Penguin uniform histories, Penguin audio highlights, Penguin discounted tickets, Penguin fan message boards…. Had I temporarily pronounced myself dead and ascended to Pittsburgh? Or Antarctica?

Yet I still could be counted with the cynics leading up to yesterday’s Winter Classic, a regular-season contest in which the Penguins would travel to Orchard Park, New York and play, not at the arena, but in front of 72,217 fans at Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of pro football’s Buffalo Bills. The National Hockey League waxed rhapsodic throughout the autumn, proclaiming that the game would once more return to its roots – evoking memories of youngsters playing pond hockey or night time hockey on a field covered in ice with picturesque snow falling gently down from the sky.

Pick your favourite metaphor – the NHL probably used it in some press release. Being a curmudgeon however, I fretted about pulled muscles as a result of Buffalo’s famous cold weather, twisted ankles from poorly manufactured ice, and a myriad of other injuries which might result and further deplete Pittsburgh’s already impairment-riddled roster.

My fears seemed to be confirmed as the game got underway yesterday, twenty minutes late due to a brisk snowstorm, even as the Penguins jumped to a quick 1-0 lead with a goal on the first shift of the afternoon. Repeatedly through the game, the Zambonis and grounds crew were called upon to clean, clear and patch up the ice amidst a persistent snowfall.

But as I turned on my television for the third period, the game now tied at one goal apiece, I found myself caught up in the spirit of the event. Yes, the game was a spectacle, a novelty event. But it was hockey; it was winter; it was a community of like-minded hockey fans, myself included, assembled at the stadium or watching on countless television sets throughout the continent who “got it”. That although the game conditions were inherently abnormal – just ask the goalies who had to battle the opposition and snow blowing through the openings of their face masks – we “got it”; we understood the event was supposed to be unique and pure fun.

When the game’s young superstar, Sidney Crosby, rose to the occasion and scored the shootout-winning goal for the Penguins, there wasn’t one fan who didn’t figuratively leap and cheer out loud as he did at the pure exhiliration of the moment. “When you see 70,000 people jammed into a stadium to watch hockey, it’s a good sign. The atmosphere and environment, I don’t think you can beat that.” Crosby reflected post-game.

You can’t beat it. You can’t beat the spectacle of standing with 70,000 others sometimes huddling for warmth, but mostly moving, waving, clapping, singing and cheering to ward off the cold. You can’t beat the sight of snow falling on the ice and players having to accommodate the abnormal skips and bounces to play the puck. You can’t beat the sight of goalies wearing tuques on top of their mask. Finally, you can’t beat the roar of joy from Crosby, the game’s marquee attraction, the look of pure enthusiasm on his face for playing the game of winter, our game, in its most natural climate and environment.