The Winter Basic has been the NHL’s signature common season occasion because the 2007-08 season, taking a New 12 months’s Day sport open air to numerous soccer and baseball stadiums throughout North America.
It has been one of many extra sensible advertising choices the league has had, and it has given usually mundane mid-season video games some added pleasure.
However the league badly dropped the ball with this 12 months’s sport between the St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks at Wrigley Discipline, which St. Louis ended up successful, 6-2, due to a pair of objectives from defenseman Cam Fowler.
It not solely confirmed that out of doors video games may be shedding a few of their luster, however that the NHL would possibly truly be out of concepts with regards to staging these video games.
So what was the issue with this 12 months’s matchup? There are such a lot of that it’s virtually inconceivable to determine the place to start.
However let’s begin with the actual fact it was a matchup that nearly no person needed.
Not solely are the Blues and Blackhawks two bottom-tier groups within the NHL this season (and all people knew that coming in), the NHL has overly relied on the Blackhawks with regards to its out of doors video games in each the Winter Basic and the Stadium Sequence.
Tuesday’s sport was already the seventh out of doors sport that Chicago has performed in, and already its fourth Winter Basic. No workforce within the NHL has appeared in additional.
It’s the second time Chicago has appeared within the sport up to now seven years and third time up to now 9 years.
Followers of groups which have by no means had an opportunity to host an out of doors sport — or play in an out of doors sport — are merely bored with seeing Chicago at all times get positioned in these video games.
Particularly when the Blackhawks have been a bottom-feeder within the standings because the begin of the 2016-17 season. Whereas they do have one of many sport’s brightest younger stars in second-year standout Connor Bedard, the workforce has stunk for years.
Not solely did the NHL recycle the Blackhawks, it additionally recycled this matchup as it’s the second time the Blues and Blackhawks have performed within the sport.
It additionally recycled going again to Wrigley Discipline, which has already hosted considered one of these video games.
The entire level of the Winter Basic was to offer completely different groups and distinctive venues an opportunity to host video games. Going again to a matchup you’ve already used, a stadium you’ve already used and one workforce that has already performed in additional out of doors video games than anyone else simply comes throughout as, for lack of a greater phrase, lazy.
Alarmingly lazy.
Even worse, the NHL took it upon itself to bury its personal sport within the schedule on a day that it isn’t usually performed.
Previous to this season the Winter Basic has at all times been a standalone sport for the league on New 12 months’s Day. Certain, it has to compete towards faculty soccer, however the league has by no means been shy about that. This 12 months, nonetheless, the league buried it on New 12 months’s Eve (when it nonetheless needed to compete with faculty soccer) on a day the place 12 different NHL video games have been going down.
The league didn’t even give it its personal day and did virtually nothing to promote it to a extra normal viewers.
There may be an argument to be made that the NHL has oversaturated its personal market by having too many out of doors video games over time. However they’ll nonetheless be enjoyable video games for followers and there may be nonetheless loads of untapped potential for the place they’ll take these video games.
However the NHL didn’t even attempt to discover any of that this season and simply went again to its personal security nets. It was boring. It was bland. It was a sport that no person needed. The league bought the outcome it deserved.
