The Winter Traditional has been the NHL’s signature common season occasion because the 2007-08 season, taking a New 12 months’s Day sport outside to varied soccer and baseball stadiums throughout North America.
It has been one of many extra sensible advertising selections 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 yr’s sport between the St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks at Wrigley Discipline, which St. Louis ended up successful, 6-2, because of a pair of targets from defenseman Cam Fowler.
It not solely confirmed that outside video games is likely to be shedding a few of their luster, however that the NHL would possibly really be out of concepts in relation to staging these video games.
So what was the issue with this yr’s matchup? There are such a lot of that it’s virtually unattainable to determine the place to start.
However let’s begin with the very fact it was a matchup that just about no one wished.
Not solely are the Blues and Blackhawks two bottom-tier groups within the NHL this season (and everyone knew that coming in), the NHL has overly relied on the Blackhawks in relation to its outside video games in each the Winter Traditional and the Stadium Collection.
Tuesday’s sport was already the seventh outside sport that Chicago has performed in, and already its fourth Winter Traditional. No group within the NHL has appeared in additional.
It’s the second time Chicago has appeared within the sport prior to now seven years and third time prior to now 9 years.
Followers of groups which have by no means had an opportunity to host an outside sport — or play in an outside sport — are merely uninterested in seeing Chicago all the time 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 group 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 Traditional was to offer completely different groups and distinctive venues an opportunity to host video games. Going again to a matchup you’ve got already used, a stadium you’ve got already used and one group that has already performed in additional outside 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’s not usually performed.
Previous to this season the Winter Traditional has all the time 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 yr, 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 basic viewers.
There may be an argument to be made that the NHL has oversaturated its personal market by having too many outside video games over time. However they will nonetheless be enjoyable video games for followers and there’s nonetheless quite a lot of untapped potential for the place they will 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 one wished. The league obtained the outcome it deserved.