Be it with an abacus or AI, it’s difficult to count how many outdoor hockey games the NHL has staged since 2003. It’s something like 42, although the Chicago Blackhawks might have played a couple more by the time you read this. The league has presented Heritage Classics, Stadium Series and, of course, the now traditional Winter Classics. There has been a Centennial Classic, an NHL 100 Classic and two (!) NHL Outdoors at Lake Tahoe. (They find Fredo down there?)
Twenty-nine of the league’s 32 teams have played an outdoor game. The Seattle Kraken, who came into the league in 2021, have played an outdoor game. The Blackhawks have played seven (and they’re 1-6). Twenty-two of the league’s 29 metropolitan markets have had an outdoor game. True fact: In 1954, the Detroit Red Wings played an outdoor exhibition against the Marquette Prison Pirates on the premises of what is, essentially, a humongous penalty box.
We know the Ohio State Pen is gone, demolished to make way for Nationwide Arena. But there’s a big ol’ stadium around here somewhere, isn’t there? Crew owner Jimmy Haslam can’t find it; he has scheduled a game against Lionel Messi in Cleveland, because parking. It’s funny how Jimmy wants to build a new domed stadium out by the airport for his Browns because Huntington Bank Field is inadequate – and yet, it is a first-class facility for a home game 150 miles away from the Crew’s home. For the fans!
The Blue Jackets fans have been forced to wait for anything and everything except a coach firing. They’re still waiting to win a draft lottery; they’re zero-for-18 in draft lotteries, not counting 2016 when they moved up one place (to third) in a secondary drawing. They took Pierre Luc-Dubois. They’re still waiting to taste a conference final as the Jackets have won just one playoff series, not counting the play-in victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 2020 bubble. Seattle is the only other team in the league that has yet to make it to a conference final.
These fans have had to wait two full decades to get an outdoor game when it should have been a no-brainer: Ohio Stadium is one of the most venerable, storied buildings in American sports. It’s perfect. Columbus knows how to throw a party. And, while this is purely subjective, when it comes to playoff hockey, you could put the decibel level of the 5th Line up against any fan base in the league.
It was a question that became more common as the century went along: Why has there never been an outdoor game in The Shoe? It wasn’t just Jackets fans who were asking. It was anyone, anywhere, who’d ever seen a Winter Classic (or an NHL Outdoors at Lake Tahoe). Columbus, Ohio State Buckeyes, Blue Jackets, Ohio Stadium … just get the Red Wings in here, if not the Blackhawks, and the potential for an instant classic is soaring. Ohio vs. Michigan goes together like peanut butter and bananas.
Oh, sure, the NHL and Ohio State worked to get an outdoor game to Ohio’s capital city for years and years and years. The problem was that winterizing Ohio Stadium that cost money, and neither the $2.8-million renovation in 1991 nor the $150-million renovation in 2000 did anything to assure that the pipes wouldn’t freeze. When the college football playoff system expanded – and the specter of a home game in December became a possibility – the work was done to a tune of $10 million. Gene Smith paid for it with money he found after he vacuumed out his car. (No, he didn’t, but it’s possible.)
It is finally here.
Saturday evening, the Blue Jackets and Red Wings will meet on a sheet of ice in the middle of The Shoe. The puck will drop a few (too many) ticks past 6 p.m. A live audience of more than 90,000 has been projected. A national television audience will tune in to see America’s Team and, presumably, the Red Wings. The Blue Jackets have been the best story of the NHL season, as they have risen to playoff contention in the wake of the tragic death of their superstar, Johnny Gaudreau.
“Mostly, the scenario around us nationally is what a hard time the team, the organization, the city had because of what happened last summer,” said veteran Jackets defenseman Jack Johnson. “To be at this point of the season, playing games that matter, for points that matter in the standings – it has been a great story. A lot of people around the country are pulling for us.”
Johnson, 38, is in his second stint with Columbus. He is a Michigan man. He is married to Dublin native Kelly Quinn, sister of former NFL quarterback (via Notre Dame) Brady Quinn and sister-in-law of former NFL linebacker (via Ohio State) A.J. Hawk. Imagine their Thanksgivings. They probably talked about an outdoor game at The Shoe, as we all have, for years.
It comes at a propitious moment.
The regime under former general manager Jarmo Kekalainen had some success, with five playoff appearances in seven years from 2014-2020. Johnson was a part of that. A rebuilding plan jumped its guardrails, and the Jackets lost 129 games over the past three seasons. The Mike Babcock horror show was followed by the firing of the GM, and the Jackets were back to being the Ipswitch Town of the NHL.
Then, Gaudreau and his brother were killed by an accused drunk driver while riding their bicycles, a tragedy with so many terrible layers that is just nigh incompressible. So many around the world mourned the loss.
And mourn yet.
Kekalainen left a well-stocked cupboard for new president/GM Don Waddell and new coach Dean Evason, two old hockey hands who’ve lived a life with steady hands. They put it out front: We will remember Johnny Hockey at every turn and celebrate his spirit. Then, they took this roster, with its mix of grit and talent, of blossoming youth and sage veterans, and they did what nobody thought was possible. They reached a March 1 outdoor game in the playoff hunt.
“These are hallowed grounds here in Columbus,” veteran forward Sean Kuraly said in a recent interview at The Shoe. Kuraly is a Dublin native, grew up an Ohio State football fan and honed his game as a Junior Blue Jacket. He’s as Columbus as a burger at the Thurman Cafe, the pinnacle of the Leveque Tower or Save the Crew.
“To be out here and playing hockey is going to be neat. I think what makes these events so special is all the people that can get in here, fit in here, make it so special,” Kuraly said. “It’s not a thing that can happen all that often for a hockey game, to get this many people together. I think it’s going to be a big celebration of Columbus and the hockey community that has been here for a long time, especially since the Blue Jackets have been in town, 25 years.”
It took way too long to get this thing scheduled yet, somehow, the timing feels right. Ohio Stadium, built by the great Columbus (actually, he was from Dayton) architect Howard Dwight Smith in 1922, just might be a mighty platform to launch another Columbus team toward better fortune in a different century. There is hope.
marace@dispatch.com
Coverage of Thursday’s Blue Jackets-Red Wings game at Dispatch.com
