After bashing the Pro Bowl the other day, I thought it was only fair to mention that "other" All-Star game taking place on Sunday afternoon just prior to the festivities in Honolulu -- the NHL All-Star Game. Like the Pro Bowl, it's a matchup that has little in common with a real hockey game, as players who want to avoid injury would rather see it played like a loose scrimmage, or even an afternoon of pond hockey.
Last October, when the league announced that it was ditching the North America against the World format it developed to spark interest in the 1998 and 2002 Olympic tournaments, I suggested going back to an older format -- one where a team of All-Stars played against the defending Stanley Cup champions.
While I think it's an idea that holds up well (including moving the game to the pre-season), I've come up with another idea that harkens back to the game's roots. Because while most kids these days play inside enclosed rinks all around North America and Europe, there was a time when hockey was played on frozen ponds and canals littered across the world in places like Laval, Kladno, Malmo, and Brookline.
The very first greats of the game didn't begin forging their legends doing time inside a junior national team program. Instead, they did it spending endless hours skating far away from adult supervision, honing their skills and testing them against their friends.
So, it's time to move the NHL All-Star Game outdoors. Back into the elements where the great game was first forged.
Granted, it's been done before. In October 2001, nearly 75,000 fans watched Michigan State and Michigan play to a 3-3 tie at Spartan Stadium. For most of the day, the temperatures hovered just above freezing with gusts of wind up to 30 miles per hour.
Sounds like the perfect venue for an NHL All-Star Game to me.
Of course, there are plenty of logistical problems, but nothing that couldn't be surmounted. Any "major sport" All-Star game is calculated to fete and flatter the league's biggest sponsors, but something tells me it wouldn't be much trouble to construct heated bubbles to keep the VIPs happy. It isn't like they pay too much attention to the game anyway.
I'd suggest Minnesota as an ideal place to hold the first outdoor All-Star game, but they're already slated to host next year's game. Any suggestions? Something tells me anywhere in the American Midwest or Northeast would probably do -- preferably near a major airport (outside Boston or Detroit, perhaps?). Part of me would love to see it played on a lake somewhere outside Toronto, but the mid-Winter date for the game might make that impractical.
I'm anxious to hear what the audience thinks. Fire away.
Might be an interesting idea the first year, and the sponsors might go for it then because of the novelty attention it will generate, but in subsequent years, I have a hard time thinking the advertisers would support such a venture.
This very idea has been proposed by the Mayor of Edmonton. We’ve got a 60,000 seat stadium that could be used for the purpose, and people probably would come out, but weather is a bit, shall we say, unpredictable here at the end of January. It could be 32 F, as it is today, or it could be -40 F, as it was last week. I’m guessing the NHLPA might have issues about that.