In an article by Dan Robson in Monday's Toronto Star, about the NHL's "Heritage Classic" game that took place outdoors at Calgary's McMahon Stadium on Sunday, the chief operating officer of the National Hockey League is quoted as follows:
"Toronto has a lot of strong thoughts about how we would stage a game and where we would stage a game. You know it’s a great market, we want to do something there. ... Maple Leaf Sports (and Entertainment) has talked about adding seats (to BMO Field) as their natural growth plan. I think right now it’d be a little tight. ... But I think ultimately that that would be the plan for Toronto."
That's right. Apparently a high-ranking NHL official sees BMO Field as the venue for a potential outdoor Maple Leafs game at some point in the future.
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Needless to say, this is a preposterously bad idea for all involved. Since bullet points are fun, let me use them to point out why such an idea would be preposterously bad:
- As the article notes, it would make no economic sense to stage such a game at BMO Field, with a current capacity of about 22,000. Even if the stadium was expanded to, say, 30,000, it would still be the smallest venue to host an outdoor NHL game.
- Then again, it could make economic sense if the goal was to severely restrict supply, so as to charge astronomical prices for tickets (but why would the Toronto Maple Leafs ever do such a thing?) Though it's Toronto, and there would always be enough corporate assholes to snap them up, this would be bad for actual fans.
- The conditions down by the waterfront for the MLS Cup were barely tolerable for the human anatomy. And that was in November. I can't imagine the whipping wind will make things particularly cheery in, say, January. You could hold off until April, but the Leafs are done playing by then. (Zing!)
- Um. The grass? It'd kinda get messed up, no?
- There's really not much "heritage" attached to a soccer-specific stadium built in the mid 2000s. McMahon Stadium opened in 1960, and its current tenants (the Stampeders) play in that fundamental bastion of Canadian heritage, the CFL -- so there's a real "heritage" link. Same goes for Commonwealth Stadium, site of the original Heritage Classic game.
- Considering the outrage generated amongst Toronto FC hardcores at the prospect of the CFL's Argonauts playing at BMO Field, this could be borderline franchise suicide by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.
There is one theoretical positive: Wrapping up BMO Field -- with its soccer imagery and iconography -- into an ostensible celebration of "Canadian-ness" like the Heritage Classic could help to ameliorate soccer's image as an "exotic", "outsider" game that is somehow fundamentally at odds with a sense of Canadian identity.
(Then again, it's almost certain that any visual cue that it's a soccer stadium would be covered up, probably with advertising.)
I don't mean to take one comment made by one NHL official in a harried media scrum and blow it out of proportion (that's for the TFC supporters groups' message boards to do). But this is definitely something worth keeping an eye on, especially if hockey fans in Toronto begin talking seriously about the idea of bringing an outdoor NHL game to the city.
Or, maybe I've gotten this all wrong. Could an NHL game at BMO Field actually be a good thing? What do you think?