After a morning filled with will they – won’t they articles, the NHL officially announced the cancellation of the January 1st Winter Classic match up between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs. The accompanying SiriusXM Hockeytown Winter Festival was also called off.
With the no end in sight to the current CBA impasse and the daunting logistics involved, the NHL was forced to pull the plug on the event.
The next Winter Classic will pit the same teams and be in the same place, Ann Arbor’s Michigan Stadium, most likely on New Year’s Day 2014.
The league and the players union will apparently be meeting again either this weekend or sometime next week. Hopefully, sanity will prevail and some sort of season can still be salvaged.
Update: The NHL has tweaked it’s “make whole” provision so full payment guarantee of current contracts comes from the owners side of revenue. This should be the impetus to getting a deal done in my opinion as both sides are in the same ballpark financially even if they are not saying so.