Really, Gary Bettman? NHL To Announce Two Outdoor Games for 2011

TSN.ca is reporting that the NHL will soon announce their plans to hold two outdoor games in 2011.

The first game will be the now-traditional Winter Classic on New Year's Day, and will feature the Pittsburgh Penguins taking on the Washington Capitals at Heinz Field.

The second, destined-to-be-referred-to-as-"The-Other-Outdoor-Game," will be a tilt between the Montreal Canadiens and Calgary Flames "sometime in February" at McMahon Stadium.

Sigh.

Really, Gary?

Leave it to a league so desperately trying to market what makes it special (i.e. the history of the game via the "What if..." campaign) to contradict that very effort by making something that makes it special, less so.

Seriously, the Winter Classic is the best thing to happen to hockey marketing since—well, I'm not sure what.

In only three years, the Winter Classic has become one of the most watched sporting events in North America every year.

It pays homage to the game's roots as an outdoor sport and creates a buzz around the NHL among casual fans, converting many of them into new NHL devotees.

What makes this such a special event is its uniqueness, its singular happening.

Look, in the U.S., there'll never be a single sporting event bigger than the Super Bowl.

But, in just a short amount of time, the Winter Classic has entered into that type of atmosphere when it comes to ratings.

That's a major coup for the NHL, and one that should inspire NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman et al. to ensure that the Winter Classic stays the singular, special event that it is.

Instead, Bettman is apparently applying the "if one is good, two is better" logic to the idea of an outdoor game. In so doing, he is inadvertently (I hope) sabotaging the league's own efforts to showcase its talent through a unique, media-magnetizing event like the Winter Classic.

If Bettman's logic is sound, what's the point of holding just two? Why not three or four?

Hell, why don't we take the whole game back outside. Isn't that where it belongs anyway?

Now, I'm really not going to get into a deep discussion about the decision to have Sidney Crosby (again) and the Pittsburgh Penguins (again) play in a Winter Classic game against the league's next great playoff choke artists (you're welcome, San Jose) in Washington.

But I do find it a little odd.

Why do a league and a man so obsessed with parity that they thought it necessary to put the NHL into a year-long coma, continue to favor, promote, and market heavily only two players—over and over and over again?

Granted, I'd never argue that Crosby and Ovechkin are not two of the greatest, perhaps the greatest hockey players in the world.

But the NHL is not the NBA, and hockey is not about one player (even the best), but the entire team.

Minnesota is a hockey hotbed. Why aren't they getting a Winter Classic before Sid gets his second?

If you must showcase Ovechkin (who has not played in an NHL outdoor game), it is clearly possible to build an outdoor rink in D.C. in January (the whole damn city was frozen this year).

Why not Washington and Montreal in D.C.?

And speaking of Montreal, why are they selected to face Calgary in this other, outdoor-hockey-game-that-isn't-the-Winter-Classic?

Why not Montreal and Toronto for an Original Six matchup?  Or Calgary and Edmonton for a Battle of Alberta tilt?

Aside from a second outdoor game not making any damned sense, the proposed opponents don't seem well-thought out either.

In trying to recreate the magic that has become the Winter Classic, the NHL is actually making the event less special and less unique.

More of a good thing inevitably makes that good thing not quite as good (read it again, it makes sense).

It would be nice if the NHL and Gary Bettman could remember what every boy's mother told him after he hit puberty and began retiring to the bathroom a half-dozen times a day for some, ahem, "private time": "The more you do it, the less special it becomes."