It would be easy to be amused at all the fuss and furor over the Monday Night NFL matchup that was held in cold, snowy TCF Bank Stadium at the University of Minnesota, but there is that little thing known as the Winter Classic that the hockey world goes all ga-ga over.

Due to snow buildup on top of the Metrodome, and the subsequent collapse of the inflated roof, the Vikings and Bears moved their Monday nighter outside onto the frozen tundra of Minnesota, the day before the official start of winter.

Fans of the Green Bay Packers, the Buffalo Bills, and most of the teams in the Canadian Football League, probably yawned when told of the adversity the Vikings and their fans would have to face.  The irony is a football team based in the state of Minnesota is now considered a warm weather team, due to the comfy embrace of the Dome.

If anything, an outdoor Vikings game every so often in late December is akin to a skinny dip in the lake on New Year’s Day; crazy yet invigorating, a reminder of whence we came.  Maybe this will become the NFL’s Winter Classic.  Maybe they’ll move the game to New Year’s Day.

We have become disconnected from the outside world.  Heading to work this evening, I was able to almost completely avoid having to step outside into a frosty Toronto night.  Most northern cities have a series of underground walkways, and Skyways, and Plus 15’s, that almost completely shelter the commuter/consumer from the elements.  Shades of the film waydowntown.

The roots of sports such as hockey and football are in the great outdoors.  Even though life was shorter and tougher circa the 1870’s, your great grandfather and great grandmother did not enjoy sitting outside in the frigid cold, watching their sarsaparilla turn to ice.  Almost from the start of organized hockey, there were calls for a covered arena.

If only to keep the snow off the ice; most of the early covered arenas were rather chilly.  Which is why the wave was invented by one Mr. George Zachariah Smith, a resident of Saskatoon, during a late November game in 1873.  Fans sitting next to Crazy George Zee mistook his repeated attempts to stand up as a cue to partake in the latest mania sweeping this exciting new sport called ice hockey.

It’s generally accepted that the first indoor hockey game took place March 3^rd, 1875 in Montreal.  The Victoria Skating Rink was the site of this monumental occasion, though the game was almost delayed for a couple of days because of a conflict with a touring Dora on Ice show.

Much was made of the new surroundings, particularly the paring of the rosters down to nine players aside.  Afterwards, open line telegraph shows were flooded with complaints about the Americanization of the game, and there were calls for an outdoor game to celebrate the roots of hockey.

Nonetheless, hockey developed into an indoor game, which makes it even more difficult to understand why the coaches of the 1972-73 Medical Centre Monarchs of the St. Albert (Alberta) Hockey League still insisted on holding half of our practices on the outdoor rink at the top of Seven Hills, and the occasional 8 am January Saturday morning hockey game at the very same very much not indoor arena. 

During that chilly childhood in Northern Alberta, it came to our attention that the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh had a retractable roof.  We all thought it would be super cool for the Penguins to live up to their name and play a game under the stars during the winter.  This obviously never came to pass, not counting that crappy Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

Talk about a missed marketing opportunity, particularly during those dark days when Doug Shedden was leading the team in scoring.

When the taxpayers of the Province of Ontario were paying through the nose to build the SkyDome during the late 1980’s, a baseball/football stadium that was going to feature a retractable roof that would actually be used, many called for the Toronto Maple Leafs to hold a game in the concrete convertible, with the roof rolled back.

This was years before the advent of the Winter Classic, even before the first NHL modern era outdoor game between the Oilers and Canadiens in frigid Edmonton in November of 2003.

Except even that wasn’t the first modern NHL outdoor game.  There was that insane attempt in 1991 to play an outdoor exhibition game outside in Las Vegas, of all places.

Look, everyone knows NHL exhibition games are dogs; they really only exist to pad the pockets of the owners.  Still, whose bright idea was it to play outside in Vegas, in September.  In a parking lot.  Rangers versus Kings.  Rangers and Kings versus bugs.

With the ever improving technology behind ice-less ice, in the not-so-distant future the NHL will finally be able to stage the outdoor Winter Classic that hockey fans really want to see, the Florida Panthers at the Tampa Bay Lightning.  Cold weather will no longer be an issue.

George Zachariah Smith would have loved it.

- Mick Kern