TORONTO: The Winter Classic became the latest casualty in a bitter labour dispute between National Hockey League owners and players yesterday, when the league cancelled the showcase event with negotiations stalled.
The New Year’s day extravaganza featuring Original Six rivals the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings was scheduled to be played at the University of Michigan’s football stadium in Ann Arbor, attracting a potential NHL record crowd of over 110,000 fans to the venue known as the Big House.
But with negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement at a standstill, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly made the announcement that the game was off.
“The logistical demands for staging events of this magnitude made today’s decision unavoidable. We simply are out of time,” Daly said.
“We are extremely disappointed, for our fans and for all those affected, to have to cancel the Winter Classic and Hockeytown Winter Festival events.”
The Winter Classic joined hundreds of regular season games already cancelled since the league locked out players on September 15.
The regular-season was originally set to start on October 11 and a week ago the league scrapped all games up until November 30 raising the prospect that the entire season could be lost.
It is the fifth time in 20 years that the NHL has been stopped because of labour dispute. The last was in 2004-05, when the entire season was wiped out.
The current lockout was imposed after team owners and players were unable to reach a deal on a new CBA with both sides at odds over how to split $3.3bn in revenue. In their last offer the NHL presented a six-year proposal to the NHL Players’ Association that called for an equal split of hockey-related revenue.
The union offered three counter-proposals on October 18 that the league quickly shot down, saying later that all failed to approach a 50-50 revenue split.
There have been no official talks since.
While there remains hope of salvaging a shortened season, the Winter Classic could not be saved because of the massive logistics, resources, manpower and financial guarantees that go into staging the one off event that has become the NHL’s flagship property and prime marketing tool.
The NHL had grand plans this year of turning the annual outdoor game into a two-week festival with multiple venues, including another rink at Comerica Park home of the Detroit Tigers, where alumni and minor league games would be played.
In just five years, the Winter Classic has gone from a one off novelty to the NHL’s signature event.
What began as a tribute to hockey’s outdoor roots has quickly grown into a marketing colossus that has been a highlight in the sport calendar. REUTERS
