"I have been dreaming about this for a long time – Leafs vs. Wings, the Big House, a record crowd of more than 110,000 people, an unprecedented spectacle and marketing gold mine.

"No, I’m not saying this was my idea. I’m saying this was obvious."

Leafs, Wings & the 2013 Winter Classic: Big House, big crowd, big fun - NHL - Yahoo! Sports

OMG! Wings vs Leafs at the Big House in Ann Arbor, outdoors, Original Six ... like the game was meant to be. Visions of the Production Line (Howe/Abel/Lindsay), Frank Mahovlich, Darryl Sittler, Borje Salming, Larry Murphy, Wendall Clark and the great matchups of the 60's/70's dance in my head. So many great players have gone through these organizations. Players like Mahovlich, Murphy, Clark played for both teams during their careers.

It may not be the biggest rivalry in sports, but you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger rivalry in Detroit/Toronto. The cities are close too, it's not unusual to see the visiting team's fans in attendance at games.

January 1st, 2013, Michigan Stadium ... be there or be square, aloha.

That's a really good match-up, much more interesting than some of the past ones.

Are you going to try to get tickets to the game?

Oh yeah ... when you have an Original Six matchup like this, outdoors ... I feel like I'm obligated to go! Good thing I got about a year to prepare for sitting in the Big House in January, it'll be like ice fishing ... I'm not really keen on having to go out to Ann Arbor but I understand they're going for record attendance ... hope they look at Ford Field a little closer for the next one.

They're trying to do the same thing over in SM-Liiga now. They had the first "winter classic" this past year with the two Helsinki teams playing against each other - Jokerit vs HIFK. I don't know how good it was, but I think it was at least a success in terms of ticket sales. The thing I liked about it was that they had special retro-jerseys for the match, which had no adds on them - since SM-Liiga jerseys are usually plastered with adds.



Although, the final jersey for Jokerit wasn't that type of a white one, but a blue one that reminded me of the Ranges' jersey. Jokerit is a fairly new team (1967), so they really didn't have an authentic retro-jersey like the HIFK had, since it was founded in 1897.



Finland also played an outdoors international match against Russia this past Thursday - which they lost 2-0 - but it wasn't as big of a success because they for some reason had it on a Thursday and not on a weekend, also it was pretty cold and the game had no real meaning since it was only an exhibition type of a game.

No ads on the jerseys? That's kinda' what makes 'em so cool if you ask me ... you gotta' love that 'winter classic' kind of hockey, the two local teams, the retro jerseys ... what hockey community wouldn't support it? Can't figure out why they'd have an outdoors Finland/Russia game on a Thursday either, but since it was only an exhibition, maybe they were just testing it out so they can schedule something bigger in the future ... you post some good pictures.

In that second picture Ossi Väänänen, who is the captain of Jokerit and who used to play in the NHL at least in Colorado, is shoveling snow from the actual ice on the day of the match... of course it was more for the media, but that reminds me of playing in an outdoor rink as a kid - you would always have to clear the ice before you could play and sometimes you had to stop while playing to shovel more snow off the surface if it was snowing - those were the days.