The 2014 Winter Classic that took place between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs has been chosen as the NHL's Event of the Decade for the 2010s. The Maple Leafs ended up winning the game by a final score of 3-2, although the reason this game was so special had more to do with the atmosphere than the final outcome.
To this day, the crowd at Michigan Stadium watching this game was the biggest hockey crowd of all time. There was 105,491 people at the game. The temperature of -10 had a vintage, hockey-like feel to it. For those who watched on TV, the same hockey-like environment could be felt due to the snow coming down for the majority of the game.
The game itself certainly did not disappoint, as it was an evenly contested match that went all the way to a shootout. Tyler Bozak of the Leafs went on to score the shootout winner as the crowd was going wild.
“To be honest, I was probably a lot more excited than I was nervous,” Bozak said postgame.
With the crowd being five times larger than an NHL arena, the noise was something Bozak had never come close to experiencing before.
“It was an exciting moment, obviously a special moment that I still remember,” said a reminiscing Bozak. “I just remember coming down … I'm not much of a deker in the shootout. I always kind of just look for a place to shoot. And got kind of lucky that it went in.”
Fast forward to 2020, the NHL has now put on 29 outdoor games along with 12 Winter Classics. Just recently, the Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators drew the second largest NHL crowd of all time during the 2020 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic with 85,630 people. A large amount, yet still 19,861 less than the 2014 crowd at Michigan Stadium.
Due to all the factors of this game, along with the intense finish, it has been named Event of the Decade, and with good reason.
As the sport of hockey continues to grow and expand into new markets, the attendance for future Winter Classics may surpass that of Michigan Stadium, but for now, this spectacle has been etched in stone as the most iconic hockey game of the modern era.
NPQ
