Gary Bettman Blows the Call in Naming Gillette Stadium Home of the 2016 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic

The NHL announced on Wednesday that Gillette Stadium, home of the NFL’s New England Patriots, will host the 2016 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic.

2016 will mark the second time that the state of Massachusetts has hosted the NHL’s wildly popular outdoor game, and the eighth time that the game has been played in the United States.

The problem with this, in my humble opinion?  2016 will mark only the eighth time the NHL Winter Classic has been played.

You might think that I am here to argue that the Winter Classic should be played in Anaheim, or at least in the state of California, in 2016, since the farthest west the game has ever come is Chicago, Illinois – but nope.  That’s not my purpose.

Instead, I find myself rather pissed off that the NHL continues to snub Canada when it comes to this enormous event.

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Yeah, I get that the NHL only has seven Canadian teams, to 23 teams located in the States – so what?  These games are popular enough that they are guaranteed to sell out wherever they are played, and will pull in impressive television ratings (for the NHL, of course), to boot.

So why not show a little love to the great folks in the Great White North?  In 2016, there will be three outdoor games played – none in Canada.   Despite the fact that the first non-exhibition outdoor NHL game – the original Heritage Classic – was held in Alberta in 2003, the NHL has only allowed two outdoor games since then to be hosted in Canada: the 2011 Heritage Classic (Calgary, Alberta), and the 2014 Heritage Classic (Vancouver, British Columbia).

Last year, Josh Cooper over at Yahoo! Sports’ Puck Daddy pitched the idea of revitalizing the Winter Classic by sending it to locations that were a little more creative and daring than someplace safe such as Boston, Massachusetts. I love the idea of the NHL sending the game to London, England or Reykjavik, Iceland – but hell, shouldn’t we send the game a few miles up the road before we ship everyone overseas?!?

For goodness sakes, the Montreal Canadiens are playing in the 2016 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic – would it have killed the anticipation, knowing that the game would be played in Montreal, Quebec?  Of course not.    For some strange reason, it doesn’t bother me (yet) that a West-coast team has not been able to host this event, but since three of the NHL’s Original Six have already hosted the event (including Boston back in 2010), why not let at least one of the two Canadian teams who are part of the Original Six host this baby?

You blew it again, Mr. Bettman.