No Capitals in the event this season, but I made the short trek up to Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia to check out this year’s version of the NHL’s Winter Classic. Quite the scene here as the ballpark fills with an expected capacity crowd 47,000. I’m more used to witnessing the pure carnage that transpires when the Nats visit this house of horrors in the summer. But it’s adapted well to hockey. The crowd looks like it will be close to 75 percent Flyers fans. Not an overwhelming amount of Rangers blue out there, but people are still filing in.
“You don’t know what to expect from the game,” said Rangers forward Mike Rupp, who played in last year’s Winter Classic against the Caps when he was still with the Pittsburgh Penguins. “The weather last year’s game we had some rain. If you get down a goal there’s not much tape-to-tape passing going on so you really got to come out of the gates. If you’re going to try a pretty play it’s going to happen early in the game. The ice gets a little chewed up and you got to play simple hockey.”
So that doesn’t lend itself to a beautiful game. The aesthetics are what carries this event, after all. But it also means far more than just another regular-season NHL game. The two standings points are important for two of the league’s best teams. But the memories these players and coaches and fans take away from event will last a lifetime. The other 81 games just don’t compare.
“Of course it’s bigger with where we’re at in the standings and with HBO, the weekly show,” Rangers forward Brandon Dubinsky said. “With everything that the Winter Classic brings it’s certainly been a much bigger build up than a normal game brings. But I think that it’s kind of taken on a life of its own. And I think that we’re just anxious to get going and actually play in the game.”
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