Last year at this time the NHL was gearing up to host another historic Winter Classic on New Year’s Day. The host would be the long-overdue Minnesota Wild hosting the St. Louis Blues at Target Field. Then the game was cancelled and rescheduled to kick off the 2022 calendar of the NHL season.
With the Colorado Avalanche on every blogger or writer’s list to be far and away the best team in the Central Division, it is the Wild who sit at 40 points atop the division, one better than the Nashville Predators and the Blues. Nashville has won seven straight during what was primarily thought to be a rebuilding year. This will be the Wild’s second time hosting an outdoor game, having pounded the Chicago Blackhawks 6-1 during the 2016 NHL Stadium Series. The Blues only other outdoor game was hosting the 2017 Winter Classic, a 4-1 win against the Blackhawks.
For as many times as Chicago is put in these outdoor games, they sure come up short by large margins most of the time.
On Monday, the league announced it would be pausing a few days early for the Christmas and Boxing Day break, as they do every year. Games scheduled for Tuesday would continue, but Wednesday and Thursday would be moved to later dates. This may also put a wrench into the two-week upcoming Winter Olympic break in February, even if the United States and the league decide not to send players to China, as is still being negotiated.
With the Wild having dropped their last four games, an early break for Christmas and Boxing Day might be just what their players need. In their 7-4 loss to the Dallas Stars on Monday, Minnesota goaltender Jake Oettinger gave up goals on the first two shots he faced, just 3:24 into the opening period. The Wild were able to tie the game at two at 15:42 of the period, but Oettinger gave one up to Stars’ forward Tyler Seguin a minute later and the Stars never looked back. This was vengeance for Dallas, who Minnesota pounded 7-2 back on 18 November at Xcel Energy Center.
Minnesota sports one of the brightest young players in the game in forward Kirill Kaprizov. The 24-year-old Russian leads the team with 36 points, which is fifth-best in the league. Currently, Kaprizov trails Colorado’s Nazem Kadri by two, and the top three are some guys who go by “A.O.” and “McDraisaitl” you might have heard about a few times before.
In pausing games for essentially the next 4-5 days, players in Health and Safety protocol have the ability to rest enough to where they may be able to provide a negative test and be activated once play resumes. The league is not going to postpone the Winter Classic unless there is a massive outbreak with the Wild or the Blues over the next 10 days. Two more outdoor games are scheduled for February, but this is the one the league has been promoting for the past two years.
Minnesota has always prided itself as the “Heartland of Hockey,” so you can imagine the excitement of the Minneapolis/St. Paul market when they were awarded the Winter Classic on New Year’s Day 2020. The problem was that the country was still in the infancy stage of the worldwide Covid pandemic and the first vaccines were not available to the public until several months after the game was shelved.
The idea that now there will be close to 40,000 fans outdoors for a hockey game is great, despite me having no rooting interest in the game at all.
None whatsoever…Let’s Go Blues!
-JC24