Classic a Soaring (and Rating) Success

Scanning Friday's reaction to Thursday's biggest Chicago event

By EAMONN BRENNAN

Updated 3:03 PM CST, Fri, Jan 2, 2009

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NHLI via Getty Images

Consensus in sports is a hard thing to come by. It's rare for people to agree that something is either good or bad; it takes extraordinary circumstances, like an 0-16 season, for example, for absolutely everybody to be convinced of one singular fact. In this case, that the Lions are terrible at football.

Yesterday, Chicago and the NHL achieved that consensus. A day after, and there is nary a dissenting voice to be heard on whether the 2009 Winter Classic at Wrigley Field was a success. It was.

A quick scan around the internets confirms as much -- it wasn't just the hometown fans, or the hockey people, who loved yesterday's game. For example, this almost-hilariously glowing review by Yahoo!'s Ross McKeon:

There’s never been a perfect game pitched at the 95-year-old Wrigley Field – major league baseball’s second oldest stadium – but it took the NHL just one try to produce one on the corner of Clark and Addison. From the roaring crowd of 40,818 to the false brick-façade boards, from the blending of Chicago hockey greats Tony Esposito, Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull to Cubs luminaries Ferguson Jenkins, Billy Williams and Ryne Sandberg, from two Original Six rivals – the Blackhawks and Red Wings – to throwback uniforms complete with coaches wearing varsity jackets and one topped with a classy fedora, the event was spectacular in every way.

LOOK

Classic Moments from the Winter Classic

Most everywhere goes on like that. CNBC sports and business writer Darren Rovell, who admits that he hates hockey, thinks they should do the event 15 times a year. (He even told Gary Bettman so!)

There are a few bloggy exceptions to this rule, like With Leather's Matt Ufford, who said the event was "something I would really like if I were one of those people that liked televised hockey." OK, so maybe not everyone loved it. But we did, and so did pretty much everyone else. That sort of uniformity is rare -- and perhaps predictive of an even greater gain in interest in hockey in the Chicago area in the months and years to come. Yep. The Classic was that good.