I didn't watch the Winter Classic. I can't even blame that fact on the teams involved, shit-ass as they may have been, because the draw of an outdoor game is almost entirely the venue: the visuals, the pageantry, the novelty of a hockey game in a non-hockey building under the open sky. The reason I didn't watch was that I hadn't realized until the morning of the game that it was being held on Dec. 31 instead of the usual New Year's Day, and by that point I already had plans, and canceling plans to watch Blues–Blackhawks is a great way to lose friends and gain regrets.
I liked it when it was New Year's Day. It's a perfect day for sports: I'm almost certainly not leaving the house, and I'd like something pretty and low-stakes to watch. I also liked that the NHL had its day. Every other league has its day. The NBA has Christmas. The NFL has Thanksgiving, greedily wants Christmas too but will never truly own it, and has the Super Bowl, which is basically a holiday already. MLB has its summer holidays, days off work being ideal for afternoon first pitches. And New Year's Day was for hockey.
It was an easy day to remember for casual fans, who are a big part of the target audience. But when I dropped a Winter Classic clip into our work chat the next day, people said they hadn't even realized it had been played. They weren't alone: the game drew a record-low TV rating for the 18-year history of the event. Now, normal people shouldn't care about ratings; they don't affect us at all, and whining about them carries a desperate funk of "please like my sport." But seeing this year's Winter Classic tank was at least a little satisfying to me, because the game had been moved off New Year's Day specifically to avoid getting blown out by the competition—the College Football Playoff quarterfinals. That's what you get for caving, I thought, optimistic that a clear illustration that hockey in this day and age is probably going to lose the eyeball war to most competition, no matter what it is, would get the NHL to go back to New Year's Day, a great day for outdoor hockey. Forget the casual viewers. Indulge the hockey fans who don't give a shit about college football; it's hard to imagine there's a huge overlap to begin with.
The NHL did not take the lesson I'd hoped they would. The league announced next year's Winter Classic, the Rangers vs. the Panthers at Marlins Park in Miami, will be played on Jan. 2. This is a work day, a Friday. It is not an ideal day for afternoon hockey, or night hockey. It's happening when it is because New Year's Day will again belong to the College Football Playoff. Cowards!
Outdoor games no longer have the juice they once did. TV ratings dropped by about two-thirds when they moved off NBC to cable in 2015. There are too many of them (the next 13 months will also see outdoor games in Columbus and Tampa) and the novelty has worn off (last week's widely ignored game was Wrigley Field's second time hosting one; the first one drew the highest TV ratings in America for a hockey game in 30 years). But once again: I don't care about ratings. Not my problem. The league had a good thing going on New Year's Day, and it has surrendered that to fruitlessly chase a few Nielsen points. They deserve whatever inattention they get.
