There was a funny tweet we saw once that said something like “the haters said I couldn’t do it, and they were right”. This year’s Winter Classic had a lot of haters. “How dare it be at a baseball stadium with a retractable roof in the Sunshine State,” the hockey purists cried as they complained about it not being in a blizzard in -30 degree weather (you know the type that makes your beverages freeze on contact).
Part of us gets it. Miami is about as nontraditional a hockey market as they come. The Panthers have also made three straight cup finals appearances and put together a damn good hockey team, aside from the plethora of injuries this year. Go back fifty years and tell a Montreal Canadiens fans the NHL would have a team, and outdoor game, in Miami and they’d probably say “Tu es fou, cela n'arriverait jamais” (we’ll give you a few seconds to use Google translate).
Point is even if we weren’t 100% in support of this Winter Classic and their retractable roof baseball stadium the Panthers had earned the right to host the NHL’s premier in season event. Why do you think the Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks were perennial participants? Because they were the dominant, and American, teams of the 2010’s. Now that honor belongs to the Panthers.
Plus their opponent being the New York Rangers was a huge marketing safety net. South Florida has more or less become New York City’s sixth borough with tristate transplants and that doesn’t include the blue shirt wearing snowbirds who would have made the trip. If that’s not enough there’s a way to tie this all into New York’s centennial season.
Rangers might not be as good as the Panthers, but they’re not basement dwellers without a following. The matchup was sure to be an entertaining and competitive game. It was sure to be a box office, and ratings, hit.
What happened left a bunch of images that seemed to come to delight of “Florida can’t have a winter Classic” critiques. The home team had little fight in them as they lost 5-1. The visiting “traditional because they’re original six” Rangers celebrated a win and the Winter Classic’s first hat trick, courtesy of Mika Zibanejad.
By time Zibanejad scored his third goal most Panthers fans have already fled Loan Depot Park. When the camera panned to the crowd there was no crowd. All that was left were the few Rangers fans who decided to stick around until the game’s final seconds. Whatever Panthers fans were left were only seen quickly heading towards the exits.
Part of us wants to cut the Panthers fans some slack. Everyone who’s a frequent attendee to games has left a game or two early when it becomes clear the end result is not going to be a winz (no we don’t mean skipping a whole period, more like leaving with two minutes on the clock when your team is down like three goals). Those images of empty seats after Zibanejad completely the hat trick looked like those pictures of the empty stadium shared a few days before. You’ve probably saw it, because those “Florida shouldn’t have a Winter Classic” people wasted no time sharing it to try to prove their point.
On the other hand the Winter Classic is a marquee event. Seeing fans leave in droves early doesn’t help debate the “fair-weather fan” accusations. Think of the games you, as a fan of whatever team you root for, might have left early. Now imagine you were at something as legendary as the Winter Classic or a Stanley Cup final game. Doesn’t the stage being that much grander make you more likely to stay in your seats?
We’re sure Rangers fans that traveled loved attending the game. We’re sure Panthers players loved the environment and opportunity of playing in the game. Those who watched from home in most likely much colder locales definitely enjoyed watching the game. The fans who decided they wanted to hate on a Florida Winter Classic, even before the special edition jersey designs were released, loved seeing the chaos of a home team losing in an unaesthetically pleasing stadium.
On the business side it might be too early to determine the success of the event. On December 31st the “get in price” (i.e. cheapest ticket) price was said to be more than $400. There was a “sell out” crowd of over 36,000 fans. This isn’t something quantifiable but we think a 60/40 split between the home town and visitor is a good guestimate. It was too early to receive television viewership information as of Monday.
We wanted the event to work. Fans and teams certainly deserved it to. To some extent the event did work. However the lasting imagines of an otherwise well put together event are going to be the ones that some will use to convince you the NHL shouldn’t have another similar event.
They got plenty of content to share as photo evidence “see this is why we need to hold in Minnesota again”. Even to those who enjoyed the game, this subset of pessimistic hockey fan remains convinced it’s the NHL that was wrong for ever daring to be untraditional. Unfortunately the true winner of the Winter Classic were the haters.