Hey, Chicago sports fans. Are we enjoying the Bears on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” over the past couple weeks? Is behind-the-scenes sports content what you live for? Then do I have some fun Blackhawks news for you.
The NHL will be producing a “Road to the Winter Classic” series this coming season, featuring the Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues before the two rivals take the ice at Wrigley Field on New Year’s Eve.
The series, which was initially also on HBO, will be done for Turner in the United States this coming season. The first time the series was created was in 2010 for the 2011 Winter Classic at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. Returning to a very different Wrigley Field is special, however.
UPDATE (from Nov. 6): “The first of four episodes will debut on Dec. 4 on TNT in the United States and Dec. 5 on Sportsnet in Canada, with the final episode airing before the game itself on Dec. 31. Episodes also will be available to stream on Max.”
“This place is awesome,” NHL senior executive vice president and chief content officer Steve Mayer said. “We’ve had long discussions, for instance, about what makes…the building that we’re in the landmark that it is. How do we bring the baseball to hockey, the building to hockey? Those are first and foremost. But it’s really important for us … [fans are] in Utah, they’re in Winnipeg, they’re in Europe, that — boom — they know we’re in Chicago. If we fail at that, we think we’ve failed.
That’s become our first mental processes in what we’re creating — to make sure it’s so obvious that we’re doing a game in Chicago, we’re celebrating Chicago and we’re showing it off to the world. When you’re showing off one of the most iconic stadiums in the world, you better know we’re playing at Wrigley.”
I will say the Blackhawks do a terrific job with their “Every Shift” series on Youtube. And there are going to be some really fun personalities on the team this year (I’m looking at how far Nick Foligno’s stall is from Pat Maroon’s). So this could be a lot of fun to watch.