On Frozen Blog

Something momentous and stupendous happened to hockey on Tuesday. By late Wednesday afternoon I was aware of an unusual mainstream media preoccupation forming a phenomenon: they were, rather uniformly, rather nationally, saying nice things about our sport. Really nice things.

Then came Wednesday’s 5:00 hour on ESPN.

I was New-Years-resolution fitnessing at a big health club then, flat screen TVs hanging overhead, the pearls of wisdom from the talking heads captioned for the sweating. At the top of hour there there’s some hip and chic and therefore unendurable split-screen of sports columnists blathering for 30 minutes. A guy named Woody from Denver, Jay from Chicago, somebody else I didn’t know, and some smarmy host red-meating the proceedings. I figured they’d quick-hit hockey ’cause of Tuesday’s novelty and move on to the important stuff, like what Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson will do together during the Cowboys’ bye week.

Instead, everyone took turns praising not just the Winter Classic but the fundamental appeals of hockey, which, they claimed, were showcased in Buffalo on Tuesday. And they couldn’t stop talking about it. They interrupted one another with accolades. They debated when and where the next outdoor game should take place. Soldier Field was mentioned, where the “revitalized Chicago Blackhawks” would skate perhaps against another Original Six club. One fella admitted that he couldn’t stick with a single college bowl game Tuesday afternoon (imagine shunning all those three- and four-loss dynamos!) because he kept getting drawn back to the Lakeside fun in a winter wonderland.

Understand that in the wallets of these Worldwide Leader in Sports personalties are laminated cards that read, “If I even know that hockey exists, I seriously hate it.”

In the middle of the hour Kornheiser and Wilbon followed, on PTI. These two of course last did coverage favors for our sport pre-expansion. But they, too, joined in the broadcast swooning over our sport. It was no gag, either. Gym exercisers to my right and left seemed to be following the dialogue like I was, but only I kept falling off equipment pedals.

At times the MoJo that moves the media in a hungry pack around a new food source is vague and intangible. It formed and fomented around hockey late Tuesday and throughout Wednesday. I don’t think as recently as 12:45 p.m. Tuesday anyone even in the NHL’s Communications or Marketing offices could have imagined the media’s love-at-first-sight sweet nothings for our game soon to ensue.

Early Thursday I Googled “Winter Classic” as a subject search, and from little more than one full page of listings spotted these headlines:

Winter Classic is a step in the right direction

Winter Classic: Outdoor Game Scores

The Perfect Snowstorm: The Winter Classic Scores

NBC Shoots, Scores with NHL Winter Classic Ratings

Winter Classic a Huge Success

NHL Winter Classic proves league can get it right (” . . . nothing short of an overwhelming success . . . “)

In truth, hockey got lucky Tuesday, on at least two fronts. The first was a slate of yawner college pigskin bowl games, the byproduct of BCS madness rendering New Years Day — once the sport’s Christmas morning — now needless, the nutritional equivalent of television Twinkies. The second front, obviously, was the weather one: raucus and Rockwellian. The Ralph on Tuesday had everything but the Budweiser Clydesdales.

Best of all, few among the millions who watched likely thought, “Ah-hah, the spoiled millionaires are discomforted for a few hours.” No, millions saw highly skilled, smiling skaters persevering through rhythm-robbing interruptions and a rapidly deteriorating playing surface, and 71,000 supporters screaming through sideways snow and sleet and gashing Great Lake winds.

I became aware that hockey had created a crush, that in this week it was being asked out on a date by the four-sport letterman who never noticed us in class; a date perhaps only for this Saturday night, but a date nonetheless.

Here’s a loser-has-to-get-a-Mike-Green-haircut wager I direct at those who think Tuesday was a lone flicker of lucky lust directed at the league: there’s a new Yankee Stadium today under construction, and it won’t be open 5 years before the Rangers skate a regular season game in it.

Why would the Yankees and BigMedia care about us again?

Because in our natural state we’re very pretty.