NHL puts Washington in Winter Classic mood

WASHINGTON - On the first full day of fall, the NHL promoted a Winter Classic where the boys of summer play.

The Washington Capitals will face the Chicago Blackhawks outdoors on New Year's Day and on Tuesday the NHL held a news conference in the noonday sun at Nationals Park in front of hockey boards marking off where on the baseball field the rink will be when the puck drops in 100 days.

'It's a beautiful day,' NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. 'It makes me think of two things. The start of the hockey season - and New Year's Day.'

Capitals star Alex Ovechkin showed off the special sweater that the team will wear for the game - with a block W that has a stylized silhouette of the Washington Monument at its center - accessorized by a pair of borrowed Nationals baseball pants, a hybrid look that encapsulated the notion of playing hockey in a ballpark.

'It seems like a long time since I first emailed the commissioner right as the puck dropped on Jan. 1, 2008' in Buffalo, Capitals owner Ted Leonsis said. 'I was watching the first Winter Classic with my family and I had goose bumps. I thought, 'This is the greatest thing I've ever seen. We want one here in Washington.' '

Bettman confirmed that sequence after the news conference.

'The first emails I get every morning on any typical day are from Ted, on any of a variety of subjects,' Bettman said. 'But he has been both persistent and passionate in pursuit of this event and we're thrilled to be ... fulfilling his wish.'

This will be the seventh Winter Classic. The Capitals beat the Penguins 3-1 in Pittsburgh on New Year's Day in 2011 and they hope to be the first team to win two Winter Classics. The Blackhawks hosted the second Classic in 2009 and lost 6-4 to the Detroit Red Wings.

'My wife's family is from Chicago, so it'll be a family affair,' Leonsis said. 'The Blackhawks are an Original Six franchise and the Wirtz family has owned that franchise for more than 50 years and they built that into the iconic institution that it is in Chicago. One of our goals is to be as important to our community as the Blackhawks are to Chicago.'

Ovechkin, smiling his familiar gap-toothed grin, modeled the Caps' Winter Classic jerseys with teammates Braden Holtby and Nicklas Backstrom, standing in front of two rows of seated dignitaries on a makeshift stage on the third base side.

Barricades and goal nets represent where the ice will be when the Winter Classic is played at Nationals Park.(Photo: H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY Sports)

When the players turned to show the backs of the sweaters, Ovechkin found himself in front of Bettman - and Ovechkin bent at the waist to shake the commissioner's hand.

'We're praying right now for good weather,' Holtby said.

Of course, good weather for outdoor hockey is different from good baseball weather.

'It's wonderful to think on this beautiful sunny day that in 100 days it's going to be snowing in Washington, D.C.,' Leonsis said to cheers from a cadre of Caps fans. 'The game produces lifelong memories.'

Ovechkin said he played outdoors sometimes growing up in Russia.

'Of course,' he said. 'I think every hockey player plays outdoors. ... I like it a lot. We're going to play an outdoor game and we're going to have fun.'

The NHL also announced the cable network Epix will produce a behind-the-scenes series on the Capitals and Blackhawks, like the one that formerly ran on HBO.

'My belief is that New Year's Day used to be about college football, and now New Year's Day is about the NHL,' Leonsis said, perhaps overstating things.

Said Bettman: 'In 2007, September of that year, we gathered in a stadium for an event much like this one. We looked at the outline of a hockey rink in the middle of a football field in Buffalo, and we imagined the possibilities. Today we gather again, this time in this nation's capital, and we stare at an outline of a rink in a ballpark, and we imagine what new heights' the game can reach.

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