Annual Winter Classic Lives Up to Hype
It has become a holiday season tradition the past five years. It’s the NHL’s premiere event. NHL fans around the world wait for the new year to roll around for one reason: the NHL Winter Classic. This year, the fifth year of the Classic, truly didn’t disappoint, as it never has in the past. This year, the Philadelphia Flyers played host to their bitter rivals, the New York Rangers. It’s always great when these games pit rivals against each other, one of the main draws of the annual outdoor event. The Flyers and Rangers have been playing each other for 45 years, and not one of those years has been friendly. With rough battles already under their belts before yesterday’s game at Citizen’s Bank Park (home of the Philadelphia Phillies), the Flyers and Rangers suited up in throwback uniforms and took the makeshift ice in the middle of the outfield for another chapter in their storied rivalry. The Winter Classic has quickly become the NHL’s marquee event of the season, and for good reason. It gets the game back to its roots, playing outdoors. Many of the players on both teams grew up playing the game on frozen ponds in their towns or on backyard rinks. This game gives them the chance to revel in their childhood experiences, when they grew to love the great game of hockey. Now, playing on a regulation sized rink in the middle of a professional baseball or football stadium isn’t exactly the same as the open ice on a frozen pond in northern Canada, but it’s as close as the NHL can get and it’s become a real spectacle, both on and off the ice. There’s so much build-up to the Classic at the beginning of the season, with fans of the teams who get the honor of playing in the game buying the custom jerseys and apparel, and spending a pretty penny to watch their favorite team play outdoors in a truly unique setting. The NHL has its share of debates and issues, but the league definitely got it right with the Winter Classic.
No matter what two teams take the ice, the game brings out another side of the players, and they cherish the opportunity to play in front of 45,000+ screaming fans. The Flyers and Rangers, battling for the top spot in both the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference, squared off for an important 2 points in the standings yesterday afternoon. After a pre-game skate with players donning their custom skull caps, they came out of their respective dugouts, had their skate guards removed and jumped on the ice for the puck drop of the 5th Winter Classic. It was a strong game by both teams – physical, gritty and full of excitement, as most Flyers-Rangers games are. The scoring opened when rookie Brayden Schenn scored his first NHL goal off a juicy rebound given up by Henrik Lundqvist. Flyers’ top scorer, and the NHL’s second leading scorer, Claude Giroux put the Flyers on top 2-0 after a nifty backhander that beat “Hankie” up top where grandma hides the cookies. Rangers power forward Mike Rupp put the game within one goal with a wrister that beat Flyers’ goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, and then he added another goal in the third period to tie the game. Later in the third, Rangers Captain Ryan Callahan dished a nifty no-look pass from behind the net to Brandon Dubinsky who put a quick shot on net off Bobrovsky’s far pad, leaving a rebound and open net for sniper Brad Richards, who was in the perfect position, and gave the Rangers a 3-2 lead. That lead eventually held up and proved to be the game-winner, but not before some late-game fireworks could have sent the Flyers fans into a frenzy. With a empty net, the Flyers were jamming the puck around Lundqvist, and Rangers d-man Ryan McDonagh was whistled for covering the puck in the crease, giving the Flyers a penalty shot with 19.6 seconds left. Flyers’ sniper Danny Briere lined up at center ice, with 46,967 fans staring as he made his way in on Lundqvist to tie the game and send it to overtime. Briere saw a five-hole opening and fired a quick snapshot, but Lundqvist got his pads down and denied Briere, giving an emphatic fist pump because he knew he just sealed the Classic for his team. The Rangers held on, and defeated the Flyers 3-2, becoming the fourth away team to win the Classic in the five times it’s been held (only Boston won at Fenway Park in 2010). It was an amazing game to watch, start to finish, and the penalty shot at the end (although highly debated), capped off a great battle between bitter rivals who now sit four points apart in the Eastern Conference standings. The Rangers secured the top spot in the conference, leading Boston by three points now. They are definitely playing their best hockey of the year, and this emotionally-charged victory could propel them on their current hot streak and be a force to be reckoned with in the East for the rest of the season. It’s likely that both teams will make the playoffs, and it was great to see what could be a potential Eastern Conference Final on national TV to start 2012.
Fans will have to wait for while to see whether it’s Detroit or Washington that gets the opportunity to host the 2013 Winter Classic (as the away team gets to host a game). Detroit has waited the longest, since 2009, and my hope is they get the 2013 Classic, it’s played at The Big House at the University of Michigan, and they set a new record for the most number of people to watch a live hockey game. And, as I’m sure all Blues fans are hoping, the Blue Note get the chance to face the Wings in the annual spectacle and we’ll get to host a game at Busch Stadium in the coming years.
