Why you should care about this weekend’s NHL Heritage Classic

The NHL will go outdoors for the first time in the 2019-20 season with the Heritage Classic, but why does no one seem to care about it?

The Winnipeg Jets and the Calgary Flames will go outdoors in Saskatchewan on Saturday evening for the fifth overall Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic. The meeting will be one of three outdoor games the NHL will have this season, including the 2020 NHL Winter Classic in Dallas and the Stadium Series in Colorado later in the season.

Outdoor games have been an NHL staple in the last decade as the Winter Classic and various other games have been taken outside hockey’s usual domain. In recent seasons, however, the outdoor games — minus the Winter Classic — have seemingly come and gone without much fanfare from the hockey world.

Have we been desensitized to the allure of outdoor hockey? Is the NHL not doing enough on their part to make us care? What’s going on here and why is no one talking about the 2019 Heritage Classic?

The NHL’s marketing isn’t reaching a wider audience

Looking around the hockey landscape this past week, the NHL hasn’t done much to promote the Heritage Classic on their social media accounts. The NHL’s Twitter account has tweeted about it only six times this week, with its most recent coming at 6:30 a.m. ET on Friday morning when most of North America is still sleeping or getting ready for their work day.

Even hockey media members, who cover this sport for a living and have to pay attention to the comings and goings across the league, have been surprised over the past week to see the NHL playing an outdoor game in Canada.

The NHL, seemingly, has shifted focus from giving the smaller outdoor games less of a national push and more of a local one. The Flames and Jets have had a lot of press about the upcoming game on their social media feeds, stirring up excitement for the fans of both markets, but not the league overall.

This shift in the NHL’s marketing for outdoor games that aren’t the Winter Classic may honestly be the better play in the long run. Focusing more on the local markets playing in the smaller outdoor games doesn’t dilute the product for hockey fans and gives the teams playing in them a chance to shine in their own cities. It makes sense from the NHL’s perspective, but it makes it harder for general hockey fans — and sports fans overall — to care about the games.

Have outdoor hockey games lost their luster?

The NHL touted out the first Winter Classic to the world on January 1, 2008 and has run at least one outdoor game in the seasons since, excluding the 2012-13 lockout half season. Including the first Winter Classic, the NHL has hosted 26 outdoor games in the 11 years since its start, with three more on the way this season.

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The most the NHL put out in a season was in the 2013-14 season, where the league had six outdoor games in the span of two months. The NHL has since scaled back their outdoor game presence, but the shine has seemingly worn off the outdoor games we once believed to be spectacles. Having so many of them in a season, and with the same five to ten teams rotating in every year, it’s hard to enjoy them as events and not just another hockey game that’s being played without a roof.

It’s not a sentiment every hockey fan shares, but it’s definitely one that’s out there in the sports world with how often the NHL has them.

Fall is a competitive sports market

The NHL, in their infinite wisdom, made the decision to put this Heritage Classic game between two Canadian teams on a Saturday evening in late October. Just this weekend alone, the sports world has college football, basketball and a possible series-clinching World Series game to compete with on Saturday night, a heavy-hitting schedule that likely will see hockey dropped by many sports fans with more enticing games on the menu.

The Heritage Classic also starts at an extremely late 10 p.m. ET, assuming the game starts on time with no weather concerns, on the weekend night before Halloween. To the average American sports audience, hockey is no where near the most appealing choice. Die-hard hockey fans, and Canadians especially, will likely tune in due to their love of the sport, but it is for sure a hard-sell for anyone outside of that bubble.

So, why should I care about the Heritage Classic?

The hockey season is still early, but the Flames and the Jets are two Western Conference teams jockeying for position in a tough group of teams. Jets’ star Patrik Laine has 12 points in 11 games so far this season, and when he’s rolling he’s one of the most electric hockey players in the game. The Flames have Johnny Gaudreau, a sensational playmaker in his own right, and a Calgary team that sits at third in the Pacific Division looking to make moves as other teams around them have faltered.

While this year’s Heritage Classic isn’t the NHL’s most intriguing or fun matchup, outdoor games are hard to say no to, if only for its uniqueness. The overall sense of childlike wonder outdoor hockey games have has yet to get old no matter how many times it’s been seen by hockey fans in the last 10 years, and Saturday’s game should be no exception no matter the matchup.