A winter classic in Spokane?

It’s hard to knock the Spokane Arena, because it’s probably the best thing to happen to sports in this city. However, with the weather turning bad, to the point where your car door will start freezing shut, it’s time for the Chiefs to move outdoors.

Crazy? Well, maybe a little.

While we don’t want to completely do away with the state-of-the-art gem on Boone Street, I’m talking about taking a cue from the NHL and holding a Winter Classic. Outdoors. Exposed to the elements.

Spokane has done a good job with pulling off individual sporting events. Look at Bloomsday. Hoopfest. The 2007 Figure Skating Championships. Heck, if they did the Real World in this city, I bet it would probably be the most widely watched reality TV show since “COPS” took a look at Spokane and didn’t want to leave.

In winter, there’s very little individual sports events, mainly because it’s hard to get people to gather when it’s colder than a Bill Belichick press conference. But when it comes to hockey, playing outdoors has a certain romantic appeal to it.

Ask the fine people who piled into Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton to watch an outdoor NHL game in 2003 when temperatures reached a bone-freezing negative 18 degrees Celsius.

All 57,000 of them.

And then ask the 71,217 people who topped that by filling Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo in 2008 for the NHL Winter Classic which attracted even the casual sports fan to sit down and watch.

The thing about the latest outdoor NHL game was the fact that people traveled all over North America to watch that game. It wasn’t just about the two teams playing, it was about the sport of hockey.

Spokane has certainly shown a strong level of support toward the Chiefs, and while you couldn’t get 70,000 people to watch a junior hockey game, a well-organized, well-marketed outdoor game at the venerable Joe Albi Stadium actually might work.

Now, you’d have to plan it out several years in advance and hype it as a one-time event, but since people in the Northwest are starved for hockey anyway, this could be a niche event that would get people traveling from all over.

And that’s the main thing: you’d want to market this to the Northwest, not just Spokane.

If you can get thousands upon thousands of people from all over to play basketball in 100-degree heat, you could get plenty of butts to sit in Joe Albi and watch a hockey game.

And like the Winter Classic, it wouldn’t be so much about watching who wins, it would be about just being there. And if you’re still worried about the competition, schedule the Tri-City Americans, who have fans that come up in droves to Spokane anyway.

Pull it off in the right way and Spokane would have another solid sporting event to put on its resumé.

Story by Brandon Hansen. You can reach him at brandon@htsports.org.