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As cited by numerous reports, it appears that Boston will play host the 2016 NHL Winter Classic.
This would be the second Winter Classic in the Hub, and would make Boston the first city to host the league’s annual New Year’s Day event twice. The first came back in 2010, when the Bruins played host to the Philadelphia Flyers at historic Fenway Park, a game they ultimately won by a 2-1 final in overtime. Five years later, the Bruins are
still the only home team to leave the field as the winner, too.
The 2016 Winter Classic will be the league’s eighth, and there’s still no word as to where the game would be played, who the Bruins would play, or when the game will be held for that matter. But perhaps I’m in the minority here when I say, uh, who the hell possibly cares? I think we’re well beyond the point of this game being anything more than a money-grab for the league. The novelty has worn off (I’d argue that’s been the case since 2012), the teams picked for the games are predictable, and they’re running out of venues.
So where would 2016’s be played if the game’s in Boston? Fenway again?
If so, allow me to just say it-- No.
While Fenway Park is a legendary ballpark, it was a horrible place for a hockey game. (Hell, you can make the case that it’s a horrible place for a baseball game.) Unless you were in the pavilions, Green Monster, or upper-levels of the grandstands, you simply couldn’t see the game being played. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. You got to see guys from the waist up. It was tough to follow the puck -- or even know where it was for that matter -- but you could still tell people that you were there.
That’s ultimately how my story went, too. I purchased tickets to the Winter Classic, and using basic reasoning, I bought tickets near right field in row ‘XX’. I bought this with a plan in mind, too, thinking that, using the alphabet as a reference, it’d be the 24th of 26 rows and therefore higher than the first row. But then I remembered that Fenway does not operate under the rules of basic logic, and got stuck watching the game on the jumbotron they set up in center field.
This was the story for way too many people (media included!), and it’d just be a repeat of 2010.
And hockey at Fenway is just blaise at this point. (That’s a weird sentence, I’ll admit.)
So, what other options would the league have when it comes to a Winter Classic in Boston? Harvard Stadium (1903) would be an option from a historical standpoint, but without seats in the stands and with a maximum capacity just north of 30,000, that’d seem like a tough sell for the league. Alumni Stadium, home of the Boston College Eagles, can hold 44,500, but lacks any sort of historical significance or allure for the league.
That’s when the league looks to the south and at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots.
With a capacity of over 68,000, the league would love to pack Gillette to the brim for a Bruins-____ game, and they could. But here’s the problem with that-- the league probably won’t have the time. When it comes to building and setting up an NHL rink on a field, the league typically needs at least a couple of weeks. And if the Winter Classic is on its Jan. 1 date, that’d force the Patriots to finish their year on the road, or for the Pats to be on the road for the postseason, or perhaps earn a first-round bye so that the field could recover.
I could be crazy here, but I don’t see the Krafts allowing their field to get torn to all hell by way of a hockey rink with the potential of having to play a playoff football game there a week or so later.
That’d make a Stadium Series game in February seem more likely for Gillette, at least from a scheduling standpoint, than a Winter Classic on New Year’s Day.
Jamming another Winter Classic into an already cramped Boston (or Foxboro) would take a whole bunch of work for the league, and honestly doesn’t seem worth the thrill. Or lack thereof.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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