105,490 in attendance – plus one
My journey to the Winter Classic began in the summer of 2012, a summer that had an almost guaranteed National Hockey League lockout looming. Even with that hanging over our heads, passing on purchasing Winter Classic tickets was not an option.
When the lockout was announced, the NHL allowed fans to either keep their tickets for the following season, or release them in hopes of being selected again. With the lockout as the only sure fire thing at that time, releasing our tickets was the seemingly smart decision.
Fast-forward to Dec. 30, 2013 – the first of three days that included Winter Classic festivities.
I was sitting in the nosebleeds of Comerica Park, watching the Toronto Marlies take on the Grand Rapid Griffins with the Detroit skyline in my front view. You could say I was naïve when I turned to my best friend exclaiming how great a picture I would be able to get once the sky went dark and the buildings illuminated the view. The game went on, the wind picked up, we got colder, and the skyline never lit up.
That was my first clue to how big this really was. In a hurting, bankrupt Detroit, buildings were empty, and keeping lights off was a financial decision. For a city that seemed so dark, there was one very big bright spot: the Detroit Red Wings, and the sound of history soon to be made.
After walking through the tunnel that opened up to the entirety of Michigan Stadium – also known as the Big House – looking around was all I could manage. Even empty the stadium was a sight in itself. Snapping pictures was an instinctive reaction, but even those images don’t do it justice.
The Big House filled in what seemed like seconds, with everyone on their feet and each of us deciding almost simultaneously that sitting wasn’t an option today. Before the game had even started, a booming voice sounded announcing the record had been shattered: 105,491 people were in our surroundings.
It isn’t uncommon for analysts, experts, and even fans to strip apart the hockey game that was played on New Years Day. Listening to most, there was one agreed upon problem: it wasn’t the greatest game they had seen. To some extent, I agree. I have seen plenty of hockey games that would blow this one out of the water. But I really don’t think the Winter Classic is meant to stage the greatest hockey game ever played. Instead it represents a whole other world of hockey – a world that many of us often forget or leave behind for the fact-filled breakdowns and statistics.
I may have suffered a hint of frostbite, causing me to limp back to the car with my foot sideways and my hair frozen together, but I would do it all again in a heartbeat and not in hopes of seeing a better hockey game. Mistakes, turn overs, a bouncing puck, ice covered in snow – this sounds like the atmosphere most of us grew to love the game in, the exact atmosphere the Winter Classic tries to replicate, year in and year out. In 2014, it finally all came together.
I’m not usually one for statistics, mostly because numbers and I don’t get along, but in part due to the actual heart of the game. I personally think you can tell a lot about a player and teams just by watching them play – watching, an art lost in a world filled with bloggers, self-proclaimed statisticians and, Corsi. For me, seeing NHL players skating in the Big House, watching Joffrey Lupul sneak a puck into his glove before leaving warm up, and seeing Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk watching the crowd celebrate after scoring a goal, was the true heart of the game.
I don’t care how many times the ice crew had to shovel snow from the ice – it just meant more time dedicated to dancing and singing great songs with over 100,00 people. I don’t care how many times the puck was turned over and I don’t care if Corsi was completely lopsided. The heart of hockey was found in professional hockey players dumbfounded at the sight of the crowd, in the noise of the masses that you could literally feel because it was so loud, and in looking around at the blue and red divided stadium filled with those who truly just love the game.
To make history in the sport of hockey is the often-unattainable dream for so many – a dream that was granted in the 2014 Winter Classic for 105,490 people. And me.