JANUARY 9, 2010 -- BOSTON --  We had a first-hand experience at the Winter Classic, rapidly becoming the NHL’s signature event, last week at Fenway Park. Tuning in to the two previous editions of the New Year’s Day game, we couldn’t help but wonder if the pomp and circumstance viewed would be as intense being there live. 

The way it's meant to be: Snow falls during practice one day prior to NHL's Winter Classic in Boston

For all the bashing Commissioner Gary Bettman has received over the years, this event has gone off flawlessly. The weather has cooperated, the games have been dramatic and entertaining and the ratings have been robust. The advertisers bought the concept hook, line and sinker with the proof being that NBC sold out its ad slots for the game and the league biggest challenge is how to grow the Classic in the coming years.

Back to our in-person experience, as with most events of this magnitude the days leading up to the event were far more fun than the actual game itself (most non-media types would be surprised how boring game day is).  We arrived two days before the Classic and the Bruins were gracious enough to allow us access to the game against the Thrashers at TD Garden. The homesteading sextet carved up Ilya Kovalchuk and his Atlanta friends quite nicely in preparation for the Philadelphia Outdoor Invasion. 

Our best experience was the practice day, no doubt you’ve seen the video of the Bruins shoveling the ice during their skate. I can confirm that incredible moment occurred when  as the Bruins started to come out of the Red Sox dugout as if magically on cue, the snow started coming down, even the crusty old media types expressed wonderment in the timing of the frozen precipitation. 

Prior to that, we were fortunate enough to experience something that most people don’t (again, with the media privilege.) The league arranged for a private tour of Fenway Park that took an hour and even for a Yankees (World Champion Yankees!) fan, it was a memorable experience.  We were led from the deadline room by a Red Sox employee, a true believer and a life-long fan who booed the New York team at every mention that was intertwined in Red Sox history. He had the history of the park emblazoned in his memories as he led us through the stands and on to the field. Our group had special permission to visit the Green Monster, the infamous 37 foot wall of lore and legend. We posed in front of it and even sojourned inside the belly of the beast, it was incredible to see the names of all the baseball left fielders who scribbled their names between innings inside the wall to be seen in perpetuity.  There’s nothing like viewing baseball history while covering a hockey game.

So you have Fenway Park with its almost 100 years of history and its quirkiness, the too small seats and the Green Monster providing a great visual for the fans tuning in at home. But is it ideal setting for this game? No way, most of the seats in the lower deck gave fans a terrible view of the game. The press box was far too small for an event of this magnitude, as our press level seats had no view of the field (?). 

The best venue for this game is a football stadium, a bowl that allows the ice to be placed in the middle of the field, not at second base at Fenway Park or Wrigley Field but that’s the price one pays for ballparks built prior to World War II. The New England Patriots’ owner  Robert Kraft lobbied hard for the game but Bettman said that the stature of Fenway has a lot to do with the final decision.

Is there anything special about fans sitting in the near freezing temperatures for over three hours to watch a regular season hockey game? In fact maybe there is, perhaps it’s the Boston population’s conditioning to winter weather over the years or perhaps it took a goodly amount of chowder and booze to keep them warm because the joy that was exhibited on Lansdowne Street and Yawkey Way was off the chart.

Fans numbering in the thousands, whether having tickets or not, enjoyed the fan festival that was a long home run from the gates of the park. We even participated in the festivities and got our own trading card out of it. While it’s certainly not on the level of the Super Bowl, considering it’s only three years in the making, the fan experience can only be enhanced over the years. 

The greatest thing to see was the families that enjoyed the different promotions with their sweaters and gear on. One of the more surprising observations of the Classic were the significant oodles of Flyers fans that were in the general population, some reports said that 20% of the ticket holders for the game were Philly rooters and that just dialed up the intensity both inside the park and out.

Through the cold, the waiting and the incredible price of a regular season ticket, I heard no complaints from the fans about anything, a truly amazing thing considering the increasing popularity and demand for tickets to the Winter Classic. The flawless performance of the league now has other markets clamoring for their grasp at the Winter Classic brass ring.  Rightfully so, this event put the NHL on a national stage something the All Star Game, NHL Awards or dare I say, the Stanley Cup Playoffs doesn’t do. 

So how does the league top this year’s event? It’s doubtful they can get a more dramatic rally by the home side to send the faithful home happy, the first time a home team has won the classic.  As we hear it, the NHL will expand the Classic to two games next season, keeping one in the United States on New Year’s Day but adding a second one in Canada and the short money says Calgary (brrrrr) will host.

The twist is that NBC has no interest in televising a second game (got to get that Poulan Weed Eater Bowl game on, I guess) which frees up the game to be contested on a date other than January 1. The Canadian version of the Classic is destined to be contested as part of national weekend celebration of hockey and without doubt, will be huge. As for the venue of the American game for 2011, conventional thinking is that the next move would be a few hundred miles south to the new Yankee Stadium. 

While the chatter says that the logistics and timing of a planned football bowl game (yikes, ANOTHER one) won’t allow the stadium to be converted for a New Year’s Day event. While that may be true, we hear that the Yankees went hard after this year’s game and to lose it to the hated Fenway Park turned off Yankees ownership to the notion of hosting the game.  Alternate venues at this point are Citi Field (the less glamorous venue in New York), TCF Bank Stadium (the home of the Minnesota Golden Gophers) and our favorite Penn State University with its almost 100,000 seats. The biggest issue with Beaver Stadium surrounds the teams that would participate. The natural matchup, the Pittsburgh Penguins and Flyers wouldn’t work because both teams have appeared and the league does want rotation of franchises participating (but don’t think you’ll ever see a Nashville-Tampa Bay matchup) but how could it resist a Crosby-Ovechkin matchup in front of a record breaking NHL crowd?

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