The Centennial Classic lived up to its billing yesterday afternoon in Toronto, as much-ballyhooed rookie Auston Matthews scored twice, leading the Maple Leafs to a wild 5-4 overtime win over Detroit. It was the best finish to a New Year’s Day outdoor game since Marco Sturm’s deflection broke a 1-1 tie midway through overtime seven years ago in the shadow of the Green Monster at Fenway Park. Yesterday, Matthews flipped in the rebound of a point shot that caromed off the end boards to the side of the crease for the winner and his rookie-leading 20th goal of the season with 1:20 left in OT. His first goal gave Toronto a short-lived 4-1 lead in the third period as Detroit rallied for a trio of goals in six minutes capped by Anthony Mantha’s desperate tying goal with 1.1 seconds left in regulation.
But whether the Centennial Classic ended, as it did, in an exciting high-scoring overtime finish, or with one side winning 1-0 in a low-drama, tight-checking defensive battle, the result on the balance sheet, attendance figures and TV ratings would still be positive either way for the NHL in Canada.
Hockey sells itself north of the border.
It is a different story in the United States where the ninth Winter Classic is set to begin today at noon (Central), pending a final decision on the start time to be announced at 7 am (Central), due to the expected warm high-40s temperature and rainfall in St. Louis.
In theory, the Winter Classic is one of the best ideas that the NHL has introduced in recent years to capture the imagination of new, casual or veteran fans roughly half-way through the schedule.
Indeed, the annual mid-season Winter Classic occurs on a holiday when most people are probably recovering and watching TV, featuring an idyllic outdoor rink in the center of a baseball park or football field with a loud, awe-struck capacity crowd numbering two to four times the capacity in most arenas.
What could go wrong?
Certainly on the ice, the past eight Winter Classics have produced their share of signature moments. In addition to Sturm’s sudden-death winner… ex-Penguin Mike Rupp scoring twice at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia then mock-saluting to “honor” Flyers’ forward and ex-Penguin Jaromir Jagr… Toronto center Tyler Bozak scoring the shootout winner in snowy Michigan Stadium in 2014, before an enormous crowd of 105,491 fans… a feat first accomplished by Sidney Crosby six years earlier in a similar snowstorm to win a shootout for the visiting Penguins at the inaugural Winter Classic in Buffalo.
Yet what is wrong with the Winter Classic is its sagging TV ratings and its untapped promotional potential on television in the weeks leading up to the January 1st (or 2nd) game. Last season’s New Year’s Day game at Gillette Stadium in Boston produced the worst Winter Classic rating ever, and the first time total viewership dropped under 3 million. The first seven Winter Classics averaged 3.99 million viewers but 30% fewer viewers relative to average tuned in to watch the 2016 contest. The usual factors were cited: a lopsided game (5-1), substandard intermission musical entertainment and the presence of a Canadian team. Yet the 2009 Classic was quite lopsided – Detroit scored five straight times at one point to take a 3-goal lead – and the 2014 Classic featured a Canadian club for the first time, but 4.4 million viewers tuned in to watch each of those games.
More likely, college football bowl games drew viewers away, a problem that will always exist when scheduling any televised event on New Year’s Day afternoon or evening.
What can be done?
I would like to see the Winter Classic permanently moved out of the noon or 1 pm Eastern time slot and into prime time, first, to avoid alienating the western half of the country. If you are a Los Angeles-dwelling hockey fan, are you seriously awake on New Year’s Day at 9 am or 10 am? Are you even sober? Second, setting the start time at approximately 7:30 pm Eastern, staggers the Winter Classic approximately half way between the traditional start times of the mid-afternoon Rose Bowl and the early-evening Sugar Bowl, decreasing the number of viewers changing channels near the end of the third period to watch the end of the fourth quarter of one of the two bowl games.
Disregarding the all-important TV ratings, the Winter Classic aesthetically looks … better at night. Recall the 2011 contest at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh where the Penguins and Capitals squared off. The original afternoon start was postponed to the evening due to the same weather conditions expected in St. Louis tomorrow – warmth and rain. Instead of grim, drab gray rainy skies hovering over gray buildings, we were treated to a rink that just seemed to glow brightly when contrasted with the soft evening building lights on the Allegheny River skyline and dark night sky.
Besides visual appeal, the most important way the NHL and NBC can boost TV ratings with a bold move of the Winter Classic to prime time, is linking the presentation of the game with a new episode of one of NBC’s top-rated shows immediately following the game such as Chicago Fire, The Voice or This Is Us. TV viewers are generally starved for new content after the Christmas break. The TV network that holds rights to the Super Bowl does this quite frequently. Those of a certain age will remember when FOX kept casual football fans glued to the game with the promise of a new episode of The Simpsons afterward (or Friends when NBC was broadcasting the game).
Additionally, developing good working relationships with popular actors and actresses of NBC’s highly-watched shows and then enlisting these popular TV stars to do cross-promotions for the NHL is an area the league should tap into much more.
I’m not talking about flying in Nelly tomorrow to perform at the pregame festival simply because he’s from St. Louis. That won’t attract the average TV viewer who neither cares about hockey nor hip-hop.
Yes, there have been “standard” TV commercials during NBC’s top-rated shows waxing rhapsodically about the purity of hockey with the date, time, location and teams of the Winter Classic, but wouldn’t it be more appealing to the average TV viewer if it was the stars of their favorite shows doing the marketing? What if Taylor Kinney and Joe Minoso, both seen by Chicago Blackhawks’ fans on the ice at United Center, teamed up with their equally popular Chicago Fire co-star Monica Raymund to publicize the Winter Classic in more creative NHL-NBC advertisements?
Wouldn’t that appeal to the widest potential viewing audience?
NBC has a ratings hit on its hands with the debut of This Is Us this past autumn and by a twist of fate, one of the show’s most respected, talented actors is Sterling K. Brown, an Emmy Award winner and native of … St. Louis. For the NHL and NBC, this opportunity should have been like staring at an empty net from the slot with the puck on your stick.
Let me be clear: my rationale for suggesting the NHL should have enlisted Brown to promote the Winter Classic has nothing to do with the fact that he is African-American nor the tired, patronizing notion that a [fill-in-the-blank ethnicity] man would appeal to [fill-in-the-blank ethnicity] fans who are currently under-represented in hockey. Likewise, bringing in Raymund would have nothing to do with appealing to women or Hispanic-Americans. A white girl can look up to P.K. Subban and be motivated to play hockey as equally as an African-American teenager can look up to Jonathan Quick and be inspired to play hockey. These NBC actors and actresses should be considered simply because they are stars of immensely popular programs, talented and winners of awards in their field.
The average TV viewer watching Chicago Fire or This Is Us seeing a promotion from Raymund or Brown encouraging you to watch the Winter Classic plus a new episode of their shows on New Year’s night will pique the curiosity of a hockey noob far better than anything the league and NBC has yet attempted.
Knowing your favorite TV show is coming up in 15 minutes during a 6-0 Winter Classic blowout in the third period will generally keep you from changing the channel.