[blueandwhite]

New Year's day 2009 will see Detroit vs Chicago in an outdoor game.
Love it.
This is the third such game - last season, Buffalo played Pittsburgh and snow fell as the Pens won in a shootout. In 2003, Edmonton played Montreal in Edmonton.
NBC will air the game.

[Lefty Noob]

It's gonna be great. The NHL really has a winner in this Winter Classic.

[blueandwhite]

I love the intermingling of old sports classics, like having the game outdoors and having it in Wrigley Field. It's a great nod.

[Seahawker 562]

Im definitly excited for this one.

[Oli Jokinen!]

Now we got to have it every year. Eh, people will probably remember the winter classic from last season to be the one where ''The Sabres got owned''.

[bears9]

This will be big this is the most Chicago has talked about hockey in a long time, we are an underrated hockey town, the game will be great, Wrigley is a great place for a game, the Hawks are on the rise, the Wings just won the Cup. It will be huge.

[LSC9901]

Since I'm not a big follower of Hockey I guess I just never paid to much attention to the fact that 99.99999% of the games are played inside now. Other than the weather issues itself what other problems are there to playing outside ?

[blueandwhite]

Honestly, it's just the weather, i think - and if the weather can be a hindrance, it's also a huge boost. When the Habs played the Oilers that first time this ever happened, theodore wore his toque over his face mask and it snowed and snowed - it was like olden days and the fans and the players seemed to love it. and it was cold in Edmonton that day.

[LSC9901]

I suspect the novelty of it would wear off pretty fast if you had to sit in the cold every game. Are there any colleges that play outside anymore ?

[blueandwhite]

okay every day - yeah.
Up here, I don't think any university teams play regularly outside if at all - except for shinny.
They like making sure that ice is perfect - that's tough outdoors.

[Lefty Noob]

Weather definitely would be the biggest factor preventing more outdoor games.
Not just extreme cold and snow up north, but melting ice down in some of the southern locales, say, Tampa Bay?

[blueandwhite]

yeah - it ain't never going to happen there.