NHL’s Collins on State of Classic, Potential Future Sites at LinesMaker

NHL’s Collins on State of Classic, Potential Future Sites

PHILADELPHIA - NHL Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer John Collins praised the city of Philadel­phia, the Fly­ers and the Phillies, for help­ing the League with such a suc­cess­ful build out for the 2012 Bridge­stone NHL Win­ter Classic.

“It’s been fan­tas­tic,” Collins said Sat­ur­day after­noon dur­ing an impromptu inter­view ses­sion in the press box prior to the Mol­son Cana­dian 2012 NHL Win­ter Clas­sic Alumni Game at Cit­i­zens Bank Park. “The Fly­ers, they’re great, and they have a great rela­tion­ship with the Phillies. The Phillies orga­ni­za­tion has been great. They don’t do a lot of these events, so you really have to tip your hat to them to let us come in and do it. And, you know, the mar­ket has been great. The mar­ket is alive.”

Collins admit­ted it’s not ideal for the NHL to have what he called “the dead day” on New Year’s Day in between Saturday’s Alumni Game and the Win­ter Clas­sic game on Jan. 2 (1 p.m. ET NBC, CBC, RDS), but he said he also believes it works in the favor of the fans.

“It’s kind of nice in that it stretches the event over a cou­ple of days and gives more fans the abil­ity to come out and touch it and feel it,” Collins said.

Beyond Philadel­phia, Collins touched on two mar­kets that could one day get a Win­ter Clas­sic game — New York and Detroit.

Collins said the NHL has looked into venues in and around the New York area, includ­ing Yan­kee Sta­dium. How­ever, the Yan­kees home ball­park won’t be avail­able to the NHL until at least 2014 due to a prior com­mit­ment to host the Pin­stripe Bowl that expires after the 2013 game.

“We looked at Citi Field,” Collins said. “We’ve looked out at Met Life (Sta­dium). We’ve looked at the Yale Bowl. We’ve talked about West Point. There are a lot of really great venues in the New York area. Yan­kee Sta­dium obvi­ously is a spe­cial place and we really can’t get in there for the next cou­ple of years.”

As for Detroit, Collins said the League has talked in gen­eral terms with the Red Wings and own­ers Mike and Mar­ian Ilitch about host­ing a Win­ter Clas­sic, but the talks have not reached the for­mal stages.

“Obvi­ously they’ve played in Chicago as the vis­it­ing team so they have an expe­ri­ence with the event and under­stand how they can use it in Detroit to do what they want to do in terms of get­ting a new arena built,” Collins said.

Asked if play­ing a game at Michi­gan Sta­dium in Ann Arbor is a pos­si­bil­ity, Collins said it’s likely the League and the Red Wings would inves­ti­gate pos­si­bil­i­ties for host­ing a game in down­town Detroit first.

The Ilitch fam­ily also owns the Detroit Tigers and Com­er­ica Park in down­town Detroit.

“I think for the Red Wings, down­town Detroit in gen­eral has been a big invest­ment for the Ilitches,” Collins said.

Collins also touched on a few other top­ics, includ­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of NBC agree­ing to wel­come a Cana­dian team to the Win­ter Clas­sic. He said it has not yet been dis­cussed, but it’s also not out of the realm of possibility.

“There were strong feel­ings as we were build­ing this event that (NBC’s) met­rics were dri­ving the rat­ings,” Collins said. “That was impor­tant to them and obvi­ously was impor­tant to us too. But, I think the event is begin­ning to grow now. They’re buy­ing into some­thing we’re build­ing together, which is a cel­e­bra­tion of hockey. If we could fig­ure out the right matchup, maybe it would work; but we haven’t talked about any of that yet.”

There still isn’t a deal in place with HBO to do another “24/7″ series with next year’s Win­ter Clas­sic teams, but Collins said the League is def­i­nitely inter­ested in being part­ners with HBO for a third con­sec­u­tive year.

“We’ve been doing it on a year-to-year basis,” he said. “They have a new man­age­ment team com­ing in now, but I think it has been great for us and it has been great for them, too. So, hope­fully, we’ll be able to fig­ure it out, because we’d like to go forward.”

Fol­low Dan Rosen on Twit­ter at: @drosennhl

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