“The rest of the bowls were what I used to call the ‘Take Out the Trash Bowl,'” Miller said in 2018. “They were bowls that people didn’t really pay much attention to. They were good games and they were fun for those teams and those universities to play in, but they didn’t really influence the race for the national championship in college football or bring together the best from each conference. So we saw that as an opportunity.”
Miller wanted to kick off NBC’s contract with the NHL in the 2005-2006 season with a bang. To take advantage of the spotlight of the intense sports rivalry that existed between the cities of New York and Boston at that time, due to the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, the executive sought to face the New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins in the legendary Yankee Stadium. However, the Rangers’ contract with Madison Square Garden prohibited them from playing a home game outside the legendary arena, and the Yankees’ front office was also not receptive to the idea of hosting a hockey game on their hallowed field.
Additionally, although Bettman had authorized the game at Yankee Stadium, he was still hesitant to host another outdoor game, as the NHL did not have a special events department at the time. Still, Miller continued to insist.
“Gary Bettman still makes fun of me that I was always harping on him,” Miller said. “Every time we got together to talk about other topics as we prepared for the start of the next season, he would say to me, ‘I know you really want to do this game outdoors, you’re never going to let go.’ That kind of thing.”
“I told him, ‘I really think this is a good idea and we have to find a way to make it happen.'”
The tradition of the Winter Classic is born
With the arrival of John Collins to the NHL as Senior Executive Vice President of Business and Media, hosting a large outdoor event became a reality. Collins had exceptional credentials thanks to his time as an NFL executive. His goal was to build a national presence for the league in the United States and generate greater revenue. An event like the Winter Classic could be the first step towards this. Collins was inspired by what the Super Bowl meant to the NFL.
“The Super Bowl not only gave validation to the new business model, but it also created a new avenue for the NFL to promote itself in terms of the event schedule,” Collins explained. “Everyone talks about the NFL being a 365-day-a-year business, but that was really the beginning of the 365-day business.”
Collins formed his special events team and the idea of hosting a big outdoor game finally came to fruition.
The NHL eventually settled on a name for the event: the Winter Classic. Miller indicated that they initially wanted to call it the Ice Bowl, a reference to the famous 1967 NFL Championship Game between the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers that was played in icy conditions, but toy company Wham-O! It already had that phrase registered for one of its products. They then considered other names—Winter Challenge, The Challenge—but Winter Classic was the winning option.
Although the Winter Classic sounded like a great idea on paper, there was a lot of skepticism. One of the main doubts was whether the NHL could fill a baseball or football stadium in the United States. Of the teams identified as candidates to host the game, the Buffalo Sabers were the only ones to accept the proposal. This pleased both the NHL and NBC, as Buffalo had a reputation as a deeply sporting city.
“I think Buffalo is one of the great sports markets in the United States,” Miller said. “We looked at the viewership levels of the local teams and the way they follow hockey, and Buffalo was consistently in the top three cities in the country in terms of following their hockey team. So we knew it was a city that was passionate about hockey. For us, there was no doubt that they were going to support it.”
