What stood out from 2016 Winter Classic

The NHL’s eighth annual Winter Classic brought several new high marks, one visible new low and a featured addition to its overall schedule. After assessing the results, the league and its partners came away from the Jan. 1 showcase looking toward the continuation of hockey’s outdoor events.

This year’s event featured, for the first time, a return to a team market that had previously hosted the event, Boston — though the game slid south to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., from its Fenway Park site in 2010. Next up are two new outdoor markets for games in the NHL’s Coors Light Stadium Series next month. Minnesota will host Chicago on Feb. 21 at TCF Bank Stadium, while Colorado will host Detroit at Coors Field in Denver six days later.

Warmer weather and a packed stadium resulted in record merchandise sales. Photo by: IAN THOMAS / STAFF

Both events could be expected to greet attendees with colder temperatures than what those fans on-site for this year’s Winter Classic experienced. At the same time, that warmer-than-usual weather in the Northeast combined with the usual packed stadium and the rival fan bases of the participating teams (Boston and Montreal) to give the league its best event retail sales mark for any outdoor game, according to the league’s chief marketing officer, Brian Jennings.

Game-day merchandise sales were up 10 percent over last year, and sales of Winter Classic-related items on the league’s online shopping portal were up 31 percent. While the NHL did not disclose specific revenue figures, Jennings said the on-site merchandise sales eclipsed all previous outdoor games held at football stadiums, including the previous record-holder: the 2014 Winter Classic at 100,000-plus-seat Michigan Stadium.

Jennings said the items that typically sell well at the Winter Classic, such as jerseys, scarves, hats and gloves, were their typical top performers again this year. But where the league saw significant sales growth — attributable to the unseasonably warmer weather, Jennings said — was in the sale of items like hooded sweatshirts and long-sleeve T-shirts, which don’t normally sell in volume for an outdoor game in January. With the need for fewer layers, fans expanded their purchasing range.

> THE WOMEN TAKE IT OUTSIDE: One of the most talked about moments at Gillette Stadium for this year’s Winter Classic didn’t come during the Jan. 1 game but rather came a day earlier, when the NHL hosted what it called the Outdoor Women’s Classic: a game between the Boston Pride of the National Women’s Hockey League and Les Canadiennes of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League.

With the event being formally announced just three days prior after about six to eight weeks of legwork by the three leagues, Hockey Canada and USA Hockey, logistical challenges kept the game to just two 15-minute periods and was only available to those fans in attendance; it was not televised or streamed anywhere. Still, the significance of the NHL supporting professional women’s hockey on this stage was clear to many. Also notable was that the two women’s leagues came together for the event given past friction between the two.

COHIG

“It certainly was a short window of time, and there are a lot of moving parts to execute anything on this scale from a Winter Classic standpoint, but we were very happy about how much cooperation there was, how the game was executed and how it all came together,” said Susan Cohig, the NHL’s senior vice president of business affairs. “Everyone had a common goal, and we worked well together.”

Cohig noted the lack of a broadcast component, but she said the league tried to ensure that the women’s teams’ players were involved in the various events and activities around the Winter Classic so that fans would have an opportunity to interact with them, such as at the NHL Spectator Plaza outside the stadium.

The game itself went smoothly, with a few thousand people in attendance prior to the start of a Canadiens-Bruins alumni game, but a cloud was cast when Boston forward Denna Laing crashed hard into the boards after stepping on another player’s stick. Laing remained hospitalized as of press time, and no further details were known regarding her injuries.

The NHL had previously helped arrange insurance coverage for the game and the players, in addition to covering matters such as player compensation for the game.

NHL partner Scotiabank was the game’s presenting sponsor.

Cohig said the NHL will be looking at ways to involve women’s hockey at future Winter Classics. Reflecting back on the game several days later, Cohig said her biggest takeaway was the experience itself.

“Just looking back at how happy the players were to be a part of it, and the looks on their faces when they stepped on the ice for the first time, it was just incredible,” she said.

> GREEN ON ICE: Prior to the start of the Winter Classic, the Gillette Stadium video boards played an NHL public service announcement that the league created with partner Constellation Energy. Starring Edmonton Oilers alternate captain Andrew Ference, the video touted the league’s environmental work and how it had minimized the carbon footprint of the outdoor event.

It’s been a successful past year for the NHL and NHL Green, the environmental sustainability initiative the league launched in 2010 to address the effects of climate change and freshwater scarcity on the game of hockey. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman met with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy and accepted a 2015 Green Power Leadership Award on behalf of the league during the game, making it one of five organizations to receive the award. (Apple and Microsoft are among the others.)

NHL Green also ran a campaign at the league’s host hotels in Boston highlighting its work in conserving water, encouraging its guests to do the same by texting “NHL” to a specific number. The league committed to restoring 1,000 gallons of water to rivers across North America for every text sent.

“Since 2011 we’ve been able to restore more than 40 million gallons of water to rivers across North America,” said Omar Mitchell, the league’s vice president of corporate social responsibility. “It’s always been our goal to take a pledge like this that had been geared towards our internal stakeholders and build it out to where it becomes more of a fan-facing event.”

Spectator Plaza was popular with fans. Photo by: IAN THOMAS / STAFF

> MAKING IMPRESSIONS: NHL partners were active again this year at the league’s Spectator Plaza, the site of a two-day festival just outside Gillette Stadium. Among them: Bridgestone, the presenting sponsor of the Winter Classic, had one of the biggest attractions, where fans could “test their performance” by either making a game-winning save as a goalie or competing against friends in EA Sports’ “NHL 16”; York, the NHL’s official HVAC partner, had one of the more popular activations, offering a giant snow globe (complete with fake snow) that fans could enter; Reebok activated around its Dress For Battle social campaign, encouraging fans to pose with their best game faces for a picture, then providing them with a copy of the photo and a magnetic Winter Classic frame; and DraftKings had one area where fans could shoot at hockey nets and another area where they could sign up for daily fantasy games on tablets.

> MEANWHILE, ON TV: While the Winter Classic proved once again this year to be a very popular in-market event, it suffered a second-straight year of record-low viewership on NBC.

Jon Miller, NBC Sports president of programming, cited a number of factors that he felt led to the drop, including college football competition in the traditionally strong NHL viewership markets of Ohio and Michigan — with the Buckeyes and Wolverines playing bowl games during the time of the Winter Classic. Miller also noted the lopsided result of the game, a 5-1 Montreal win, as well as the inclusion of a Canadian team in the game. The game aired on Sportsnet and TVA Sports in Canada, and Canadian audiences aren’t factored into NBC’s U.S. viewership numbers.

“Even though the numbers were off, it was still a strong number for us, and it’s a real celebration of the sport that the NHL loves as well,” Miller said.

Miller said the NHL came to the network a year prior and expressed how much Montreal wanted to be involved, a decision he still agrees was the right one.