It was sometimes difficult on Wednesday afternoon to imagine the kind of Fenway snow globe that will take effect when the Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers on Yawkey Way on Jan. 1 during the 2010 Bridgestone Winter Classic. It was 80 plus degrees and sunny with blue skies at the Lyric Little Bandbox, and B’s players like Marco Sturm, Aaron Ward, David Krejci, Patrice Bergeron and Shawn Thornton were sweating it out in their full hockey sweaters on a July afternoon.
But there was a mock set of hockey boards built along the Fenway infield in the approximated spot of where the outdoor rink will be set up, and it became all the more real when NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman talked about the “worst kept secret in the NHL.” The average observer could tell that the normally excellent box seats and places like “Henry Town” are going to obstructed view challenges rather than prime seating.
Boston Mayor Tom Menino announced that there would be two days of public skating offered at the rink within Fenway, and promised that there will be more supplemental events on the horizon. Sources have already indicated to WEEI.com that Boston University and Boston College will be playing each other. (Furthermore, we’ve heard that game will be played a week later on Jan. 8.) So plan on that once-in-a-lifetime rink at Fenway being up for an extended period of time, and plan on freezing temps and a light snowfall to set the scene on Jan. 1 greeting both teams as they emerge from the Fenway dugouts.
“During last year’s winter break, I actually went out and played with my brother at the pond, so I did it recently,” said Bergeron. “It’s going to be amazing. It’s going to be a lot of fun and I’m very excited about it. There’s so much history and so many memories in this building. I’m just happy to be a part of it.
“It doesn’t get any better than this: playing at Fenway Park, playing a good time against the Flyers and playing outside. It gives me chills just thinking about it.”
The sightlines will be bad and it might not be the highest quality of hockey that you’ll see in Boston’s other 82 games throughout the season. But it’ll be an event that people will be clamoring for. Here’s a few deep thoughts on some info snagged at Wednesday’s Fenway press conference announcing the Classic:
1) Enough with the complaining and eyeball-rolling that it’s not the Canadiens, Rangers or Capitals. I wrote about why the Bruins would be playing the Flyers a month ago, and that should have been plenty of time for all of this to sink into the Boston mindset. I haven’t heard anything to dissuade me from the information I was given a month ago.
NBC didn’t want the Montreal Canadiens because they wanted two US markets -- and the subsequent ratings from those markets -- for their Winter Classic showpiece. Rumors are already circulating that the Rangers were pulled out as an option for this season’s outdoor game because the Capitals will be playing the Blueshirts at the new Yankee Stadium on Jan. 1, 2011. So that plan means that New York was also out for the Fenway Classic.
NHL sources with some pretty good knowledge of the situation also indicated to me that the Capitals were the choice of the league, but NBC pushed hard for the Flyers because the Philadelphia market posted better ratings than the Caps for their network last season.
Truth be told, the Flyers and Bruins will be a pretty physical matchup between two teams that share a lot of bad blood between each other, and -- sad as it is to say -- the big-boy TV rights-holders have a pretty big say-so in what happens for the NHL Winter Classic. So that’s how it ended up being the Flyers as the opponent on Jan. 1.
2) David Krejci is working his way back from hip surgery to repair an impingement that bothered him all of last season, but hasn’t done anything on skates quite yet. The talented B’s pivot led the NHL in +/- last season and pushed his way up to the No. 2 center slot on Boston’s depth chart, and is slowly but surely rehabbing from hip surgery. While the 24-year-old wasn’t a big fan of the weather in Boston this summer, he’s done some running drills and admits that the range of motion in his surgically repaired hip is much better than it was prior to going under the knife.
Original timetables had Krejci out 4-6 months following surgery in May to repair his hip, and that could potentially push the center out until November if he’s on the far end of the healing curve. That could potentially leave one of Boston’s best offensive players out for the first 12 games in the month of October, but Krejci remains steadily on schedule at this point.
“The doctors that did the surgery say that I’m on schedule and I’ll go on the ice in September,” said Krejci. “I’ve already started working out at the gym and stuff, but it’s still too early to say when I’ll be back playing again. That’s six weeks away, so we’ll see. I can run, but it still hurts when I run. But my movement is already better than it was before, and I’m able to some leg workouts for a couple of weeks now.”
Krejci also said that he talks with restricted free agent Phil Kessel on a daily basis, but wouldn’t divulge anything about the negotiations -- or lack thereof -- between Kessel’s agent Wade Arnott and Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli.
“We talk and we’re together every day and it’s the one thing we don’t much about. Obviously a little bit we talk, but it’s a privacy thing. He’s one of my best friends on the team, but there are some things we’d like to keep between us. I just hope that he’ll be back.
“Obviously he wants to come back. Who wouldn’t? He loves the city and he loves the guys, but -- like I said before -- it’s his contract and I hope that he’ll be back.”
3) The Bruins might look very similar to their current composition when they start this season after the ice chips have settled in September. There’s still quite a bit of teeth-gnashing and head-scratching over the uncertain contractual status of both Kessel and fellow restricted free agent Matt Hunwick this summer, but both players appear to be very strongly in the plans to return to Boston next season.
The 24-year-old Hunwick is scheduled for a July 24 arbitration hearing and looks like it just get to that point with the Bruins over a one or two-year deal, and a Kessel signing appears to be something that’s going to go down much later this summer.
But with Krejci and Kessel both expected to be injured for the first 4-6 weeks of the season, Chiarelli may be able to keep those salaries off the cap and temporarily slide under the $56.8 cap figure. Then when either Krejci or Kessel, or both, return, the B’s will pull the trigger on a cap relief trade after evaluating what they have over the first six weeks next season.
It would seem to also be the overriding reason why more than one of the Bruins players in attendance on Wednesday mused on if they’d still be around by the Jan. 1 date when the B’s and Flyers drop the puck at Fenway Park.
4) Marco Sturm was moving around without a limp on the infield dirt at Fenway Park on Wednesday afternoon, and said that he doesn’t have any lingering pain in his surgically repaired right knee. The 30-year-old winger tore the meniscus and other ligaments in his knee last December that required season-ending surgery, and is still building up strength in the repaired knee.
For a player like the German forward who relies on both the speed game and being remarkably tough on his skates, gathering up everything from his pre-surgery game is a stone-cold lock requirement for a player that’s averaged just under 30 goals a season during his healthy years in Black and Gold.
“I’m just not there yet, but I’ve got a couple of months ago. With training camp still over a month away, I should be good to go once it gets here. It’s my goal that when I’m at training camp I’ll be 100 percent,” said Sturm, who visited the doctors this week and said the injury has completely healed. “There’s still a little bit of work to do, but every week and every day I’m getting better. I can’t lose my speed. That’s my game, so I’ll try to work and be the same guy, same player, when I come back.”
Sturm also mentioned that he’s become a Red Sox fan in his time playing in Boston after never having played the game of baseball as a youth in Germany. Sturm said he’s tossed the ball around a little and swung a bat, and that his son Mason has even developed a serious interest in the game of baseball -- something that surprised Sturm a little bit.
“You can’t help but become a big fan when you watch a game in this park,” said Sturm, while turning and looking around at the grandstands behind him.
5) Since the Winter Classic is something of a showpiece event for both NBC and the NHL, there has yet to a fighting major in any of the three previous outdoor games. But with teams like the Bruins and Flyers both sharing the ice as well as a strong on-ice hatred for each other over the last few seasons, this could be the first Winter Classic that will feature a dropping of the gloves.
With pugilistic players like Daniel Carcillo, Scott Hartnell and Chris Pronger on the Flyers’ side and Milan Lucic and Shawn Thornton suiting up in the Black and Gold, the 2010 game at Fenway will clearly hold the most potential for a throwback to some punch-throwing, knuckle-dragging Old Time Hockey.
“It always comes back to fighting with me, doesn’t it?” said Thornton with a smirk, when asked if he wanted to go in the record books as the first NHLer to earn a fighting major in a Winter Classic.
(A bonus deep thought from the NHL Winter Classic press conference at Fenway. Quick word of advice for our Honored Mayor Tom Menino: Hey Mr. Mayor, the “F” is silent in “Bofston” and it’s the NHL Winter Classic. Not the World Classic. Thanks. Now you can go back to reading Garfield and Family Circus or whatever it is that you do up on Beacon Hill to pass the time between speeches about fortune cookies.)
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