Reporting From ... The Winter Classic

Wrigley under ice.

by Lindsay Berra

On Thursday afternoon, the Blackhawks and Red Wings will face off on a pristine sheet of ice covering the grass at Chicago's Wrigley Field. But on Tuesday afternoon, we journalists got to it first. I'm a baseball fan. I'm a hockey fan. And any way you slice it, this was pretty cool.

Fellow Mag scribe E.J. Hradek and I decided to go in for the whole Wrigley experience. We packed up our skates and took the Red Line from downtown out to the Addison Street stop. We ducked into Gate K, took the first tunnel up to take a look and, well, wow. There are some cool ballparks out there, but this is Wrigley. And the NHL has some nice rinks, but you've never seen anything like this. The ice is parked right on top of Ernie Banks' office, stretched across the middle infield with those ivy-covered walls, that big green scoreboard and those roof-top seats in the background. The NHL has even covered the outside dasher boards with aesthetically pleasing faux-Wrigley brick.

We met up with the NHL folks and other reporters in the Winter Classic media workroom, which usually serves as a store room for the Cubs. Anyone who wanted to skate had to have their own skates—the NHL doesn't do rentals—then sign a waiver (E.J. was my emergency contact), get a wristband and listen to a list of rules from the NHL public relations department: no sticks or pucks or cameras on the ice (Okay, we bent that last one. Shoot us), no horseplay, no walking on the grass, no walking on the dirt. In fact, no walking on anything that isn't Dura-Deck. Everyone skating must walk in a single-file line through the dugout. Everyone must enter the ice surface as a group. When the horn blows, everyone must immediately clear the ice surface.

Finally, we were allowed onto the field. E.J. and I laced 'em up and stepped out onto the sheet NHL ice guru Dan Craig has been doctoring since Dec. 19th. It's a little crunchy in the corners, but other than that, the ice is great. The sun glare, however, is a little rough. At 1:00 p.m., one hour after the game will start on Thursday afternoon, the sun was streaming in from the first base side, blinding all the toque-clad reporters as they made the third-base turn. Break out the eye-black, and goalies beware.

Midway through our 40-minute skate, someone blows an air horn and calls, public-session style, for a change of direction. At the end, the horn blows again. We take an official picture at center ice, then get herded back to the media room. Regulations aside, it was a pretty cool afternoon. Cooler still, because it gave every one of us a one-up on Mr. Cub. Yep, even after 19 seasons in Chicago, not even Banks can say he skated at Wrigley.

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