Outdoors? McMahon? February? Bring it on!

My colleague Iain is already down on the planned Heritage Classic outdoor game in Calgary next February between the Flames and the Habs – apparently his long-standing reputation as a tough-as-nails rec-league version of Chris Pronger doesn’t extend to being outdoors in the Calgary winter. I say, suck it up, pick up some thermal undies at Sport Chek and a thermos of hot toddies, and bring it on! (Note to Iain: Baby.)

I admit, outdoors in Calgary in February can be nasty – though not necessarily (as another member of our Flaming Circle pointed out yesterday, it was 15 degrees Celsius in Calgary (high-50s Fahrenheit) during the 1988 Winter Olympics). And they had the outdoor Classic in Buffalo a couple of years back, and I can tell you from experience that Buffalo in winter is generally nastier than Calgary. (Frankly, Buffalo at any time, and for many reasons, is nastier than Calgary, but I digress.)

My bigger issues with all these outdoor games are the venues. This one is slated for McMahon Stadium – a 35,000-seat stadium (expandable to about 50,000) built for CFL football, which as any fan with attention to detail will tell you, uses a much wider field than the NFL. That means seats, which are already ridiculously far from the ice surface for NHL outdoor games, will be even further away in Calgary than they were in Buffalo. I’m sure some fans a Wrigley Field in Chicago or Fenway Park in Boston – two baseball parks used in the past two winters – had even worse sightlines than the McMahon patrons will have, but then, some of them will have had much closer views, too, due to the configuration of a baseball diamond.

Suffice to say, though, that none of these are ideal for watching hockey – fans are insanely far from the action. The venues are chosen to jam a maximum number of paying customers into the venue, not for their viewing pleasure.

My preference would be to see someone emulate what Russia’s KHL did a couple of years ago with its all-star game. It set up a rink and temporary bleachers in Red Square in Moscow. It was basically a temporary outdoor hockey arena – the fans where right next to the ice surface. Sure, they only got 2,500 seats or so in place, but a much better way to watch a game than sitting 50 yards or more from the ice at a football stadium.

With a little bit of effort, I imagine you could get at least 15,000 temporary seats up-close-and-personal to a temporary rink; indeed, McMahon Stadium is already set up to add about 15,000 temporary seats at one end zone, the width of which isn’t much different than the length of an NHL rink.

And where would you set this up? A couple of years ago, I was kicking around this idea with a senior hockey writer at one of Canda’s leading newspapers (I promised I wouldn’t drag his name into this blog, so he’ll remain nameless), and he came up with a brilliant idea: play it on Lake Louise, a glacial lake in the Canadian Rockies that’s surrounded by a five-star resort.

Here’s how we figured it would work: You set up the rink on the lake – maybe you enhance the natural ice with a little artificial ice-making, or maybe you just ask the NHLers to suck it up for one game and play on a true “pond”, in keeping with the old traditions on which many of the game’s greatest heroes learned to play in previous generations. You set up the bleachers on two sides, on the nearby shore (Can’t risk 10,000 people stacked on top of each other on a frozen lake, has disaster written all over it). Then you hold a nation-wide lottery for fans to “win” tickets (presumably they’d still pay for them, but they’d win the buying rights). It would be a huge contest, for the chance to see an NHL game in an intimate outdoor setting with a few thousand lucky and excited fans. And, of course, the TV cameras would be there to capture the event and its unique atmosphere.

Alas, it won’t happen – the NHL is committed to making these games big-stadium events, and teams like it that way because it maximizes revenues. But I like to dream about a little game on a real outdoor pond with a small crowd of incredibly lucky onlookers. I’d half-expect to see the ghost of Eddie Shore make an appearance.

The one very cool nod to NHL tradition that has already been floated for this Heritage Classic – by the irrepressably outspoken Theoren Fleury, no less (God I love that little guy, even if his own autobiogtaphy made him sound like a total prick) – is a reunion game before the main NHL match, between the alumni of the 1989 Flames and Canadiens. (You’ll recall that the Flames beat the Habs in six games to win the franchise’s one and only Stanley Cup that year.) This would be echoes of the previous Heritage Classic game in Edmonton a few years ago, when Oilers alumni of their 1980s dynasty played Canadiens alumni from their 1970s dynasty. It was very cool then, and it would be very cool again in Calgary. (Just not as cold as Edmonton – now THAT’S a place you don’t want to be sitting outside for three hours in February!)