Signs of Life From Hockey

Players battling through driving snow, 71,000 fans screaming their lungs out, and a television audience that put college bowl games to shame. Sounds just like a hockey game, doesn’t it?

If you believe that line, you obviously haven’t watched hockey in the past decade. However, believe it or not, the aforementioned is a true statement. On New Year’s Day, Buffalo hosted the NHL’s first ever outdoor hockey game in the United States. A sport that is battling lawn bowling for television time, hockey got a huge lift at maybe a time that nobody expected.

What does every sports fanatic think of when they think of New Year’s Day? The majority response would tend to be College Football, at least amongst those who can think hours after New Year’s Eve. Many people thought hockey was very foolish for selecting the king of college football days as their biggest day for the hockey calendar. However, the ratings for the Winter Classic dwarfed the college football ratings, and made hockey the most talked about sport in the nation, at least for the day.

Everything that could have gone right for this game did. The game held exciting end to end action, a fantastic overtime period, and a nail biting shoot out that was won by the game’s greatest rising star, Sidney Crosby. To a hockey fanatic, the game almost seemed scripted. To a casual fan that doesn’t follow hockey much, they wanted just what happened.

Throughout my life, I’ve been teased for considering hockey my favorite sport. I’ve been called everything from Canadian to European. Heck, I’ve had more nationalities than a multi-cultural day celebration. However, if for no more than one day, hockey was finally talked about as one of the major sports again.

We true hockey fans know that the game is in trouble. In fact, it is pretty rare that the sport makes a decision that helps ratings. Most of the games are broadcast on Versus, a channel that most of the nation hasn’t even heard of, let alone gets on television. That’s why I couldn’t help but be shocked, in addition to pleased, when the television ratings were announced. This game received a higher rating than any hockey game played in the previous 11 years. That includes every single Stanley Cup Championship game in that span.

Hockey has struggled to regain its fan base, ever since a lockout ravaged the sport just a few years ago. Some believe the sport will never truly return to the level of the other major sports. I know when I look around the Florida Panthers’ arena and see thousands upon thousands of empty seats, I can’t believe that the sport still has a pulse.

Don’t look now, but that beeping on the life support machine is getting stronger, and hockey is attempting to pull off the ultimate Cinderella story. It won’t happen in the form of an underdog team winning any kind of championship. It will have to happen in the form of a sport, given up for dead, coming back to be said in the same breath again as Football.

Well, maybe not Football... maybe poker, at the least.