The NHL, not the Chicago Blackhawks or Wrigley Field, will be responsible for doling out tickets to the Winter Classic II next January. So, if you want good tickets to this massive ice party, set to go on at "holy shrine" Wrigley Field, you better be either ...

a. Rich
b. A season ticket holder of the Chicago Blackhawks
c. A season ticket holder of the Detroit Red Wings
d. A season ticket holder of the Chicago Cubs


As "Cranky Blogger" George James Malik of MLive.com opines, this event is more about the Hawks and Wings than promoting the entire NHL, as we are generally told it is.

I think that "this spectacular thing" is all about Bettman partnering with a former president of the Chicago Cubs to raise the national profile of the Chicago Blackhawks. If it was about "the fans," it would have taken place in a much larger venue, and if it was about both teams, it would probably take place in Ann Arbor, where a 100,000-seat stadium would allow the average fan to actually attend the game.

Cranky blogger or not, Malik's feelings are shared, or going to be shared, by a majority of the ticket-hungry public who will find it nigh-impossible to get a good seat, or a seat at all, to this big event.

The NHL's marketing and promotion gets knocked around more than Sergei Brylin in the corners, so it's a relief to be able to give the League credit where it's due. By refusing to formally commit to another Winter Classic, even as the wave of success from the inaugural edition was cresting, Commissioner Gary Bettman has created a cottage industry of municipal optimism: Chicago wants a Winter Classic at Solider Field or Wrigley Field, Detroit wants an oxymoronic Winter Classic inside Ford Field, and the Rangers want to close out Yankee Stadium with a Winter Classic in New York.

That last idea has been kicking around for a bit, but it has found new life this week as the Daily News reported that momentum to finalize a deal for a Yankee Stadium Winter Classic is building. Now the scuttlebutt has shifted to potential opponents for the Blueshirts. The Daily News reports today that Lou Lamoriello "will exercise his considerable influence at the league level" to try and get the Devils into the game. Chris Chelios made waves yesterday when he told the media he "heard Detroit's playing" in the Yankee Stadium Classic. But the most interesting news was made by Steve Zipay of Newsday; although the Islanders are fighting to give the Classic total Big Apple flavor, there might be a chance for the NHL to share a little of that Yankees/Red Sox magic:

The Islanders may be the odd team out, Newsday has learned, because the Red Sox and Bruins have been lobbying heavily for a Bruins-Rangers game at Fenway Park. One plan on the table would be to have the Rangers and Bruins play Jan. 1 in the Bronx and the following year in Boston in a home-and-home series.

Unless you're some killjoy who doesn't think hockey should close out The House That Ruth Built, I think the debate is over: There's no better Winter Classic option for Yankee Stadium than New York vs. Boston, even if there isn't a back-end at Fenway in 2010. All due respect to the Islanders and Devils, but the national ratings for the Subway Series sucked for a reason. Save the Red Wings for a game in Chicago, save the Flyers for a game against Pittsburgh in Happy Valley. And save the announcement for the next Winter Classic until the Draft this summer -- right in the middle of baseball season.

William Houston of the Globe and Mail reports the good news those of us who would like to see this wacky Winter Classic thing continue for the NHL wanted to hear:

NBC exceeded audience expectations for its coverage of the Buffalo outdoor game on New Year's Day by earning a 2.4 overnight rating (percentage of the potential U.S. audience tuned in).

Sources said an American network has not produced an audience of that size for an NHL regular season game since the Fox Sports telecasts in the 1990s.

So there you have it: In order for the NHL to succeed on television, it either needs a glow puck or a snow puck. Meanwhile, the local ratings in Buffalo were interesting, according to the Buffalo News:

The rating peaked at 43.1 at 4:30 p.m., shortly before the Pens' Sidney Crosby scored the game-winning goal in a shootout. It averaged a 37.4 rating from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and a 40.5 rating from 4 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The high ratings are impressive, but not even close to the 46.9 rating that the Buffalo Bills had for a late-season game with the Cleveland Browns that had playoff implications. Somewhat surprisingly, CBC's coverage of the Winter Classic didn't register enough of a rating to register here.

No word yet on how the Winter Classic fared against competition from college football games -- or how "The Music of Seal on Ice" built off of the Classic's massive lead-in.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

(An virtual recreation of an actual conversation that occurred on the morning of Jan. 1, 2008, in a cluttered post-party living room somewhere in Maryland.)

• "What are you putting on now? Not that 'Twilight Zone' marathon again."
• "Nope. A little thing called 'The Winter Classic.' Pittsburgh and Buffalo are playing a hockey game in a football stadium today. It's going to be awesome."
• "Give me the remote, I'll find something to ... wait, WTF? There's, like, 100,000 people there, it's snowing like hell and Bob Costas is standing in front of a hockey rink."
• "I told you it'd be cool. I mean, not as cool as watching Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve..."
• "Actually, Greg, the word is cruel. You've been doing the same Tom Carvel impression every year since Dick Clark came back from the stroke. Hey, who's this Crosby guy they keep showing?"

And with that, a grand experiment began: Using an outdoor game to attempt to sell hockey to a gaggle of 20-something females with a self-confessed puck allergy.

(Coming Up Next: Big Time Hollywood Stars at the Winter Classic, Scandalous and Hilarious Puck Headlines, Tonight's Must-See Games, a Great Little Bud Light Tribute to Hockey and Some Guy Who's Convinced the Winter Classic was Fixed.)

Named in honor of noted gambling aficionado Rick Tocchet, The Tocchet Line is an occasional feature on NHL FanHouse in which we even out the odds for the likelihood of various hockey-related happenings.

The NHL's Winter Classic in Buffalo is approaching as quickly as my next hangover. The League is waiting with breathless anticipation to see if millions of college football fans flipping over to the Sci-Fi Channel's "Twilight Zone" marathon during New Year's Day bowl game commercial breaks will instead stop and watch an outdoor hockey game on NBC -- at least long enough to register in the Nielsen's. At the very least, football fans might be enticed to stick around and see Sidney Crosby do something rather uncommon in Ralph Wilson Stadium ... like completing three consecutive passes.

It's an important day for hockey in the U.S., as the NHL has a visually striking venue to sell its product to casual sports fans and NBC has a chance to see if hockey can succeed on television under P.T. Barnum circumstances. (Up Next: It's the Philadelphia Flyers skating against the Tom Collins Champions on Ice, to the music of best-selling recording artist Seal!) So what's the worst that can happen? The Tocchet Line handicaps the field:

Other than the fact that it's an ongoing negotiation, I have no idea why the NHL is being so damn coy about what's possibly the worst-kept secret in sports television: That the League will be back on ESPN in some capacity next season. Even Bristol has been quick to silence any chatter about it, as John Buccigross found out earlier this season. Maybe neither side wants to be the one to break it to hockey fans that the NHL will be relegated to the ESPN2 ghetto, where it will battle for airtime against Men's Trickshot Billiards and reruns of "Madden Nation" ... both of which could likely grab a larger audience on a Thursday night than a Ducks/Coyotes game.

William Houston of The Globe and Mail writes that Versus -- which has rights to NHL games through 2011 -- is amenable to ESPN re-entering the picture, joining the Dennis Miller/Buck-Hunting Network and NBC as a broadcast partner. Three national networks covering one professional league isn't all that rare in the current sports television landscape; but three different networks airing parts of that league's championship round? Houston prognosticates:

The TV schedule for the Stanley Cup final in 2009 could be structured in a way that relieves NBC of some of the prime-time burden. Versus could carry the first three games. ESPN would come in for the fourth and fifth, if necessary. If the series went six and seven games, they could go to NBC.

Currently, NBC is contracted to cover Games 3-7 of the Finals, with the appetizers airing on Versus. Game 1 of the Finals last season between Anaheim and Ottawa earned a 0.72 cable rating and was watched by 523,000 U.S. households, down 18 percent from the previous season's Finals coverage on OLN. The television plan detailed above would do little to buck that trend; in fact, it creates more questions than it answers.

The hype machine for the Beverage Sponsorship Money of Which I Do Not Receive a Cut AMP Energy NHL Winter Classic continues to hum. I took part in an informative conference call yesterday in the wake of NBC's announcement that Bob Costas would finally have the opportunity to match the prestige of appearing in "BASEketball" by hosting the NHL's outdoor hockey game in Buffalo on New Year's Day 2008.

NHL on NBC vets Doc Emrick, Eddie Olczyk and producer Sam Flood were joined by newbies "Mad" Mike Milbury and Costas, whose focus is clearly on making a game between what are currently two non-playoff teams into something transcendent, saying that "you don't have to be somebody who follows the NHL day in and day out to enjoy it as an event."

Being that this is a large-scale sporting event with an opportunity for some NBC cross-promotion, someone asked Flood if there would be an NBC celebrity component at the Winter Classic, and specifically about arguably the network's biggest prime-time star and most prominent Canadian, Howie "Deal or No Deal" Mandel. "In terms of Howie Mandel, no plans at this time to have him at the game site. Remember, Jan. 1 is a different kind of day to have these celebs in different locations," said Flood.

Having Mandel at the game, or on any hockey telecast, would obviously be a coup based on his current popularity and general appeal; but it would also be the safe, obvious play. If NBC and the NHL really wanted to create some buzz, they should draft some of the network's stars whose hockey credentials are a little less established. Who isn't tuning in to the Winter Classic pregame show to hear Tracy Morgan of "30 Rock" do five minutes on hockey? Of course, the probability of getting Tracy Morgan to Buffalo, NY on New Year's Day afternoon for a hockey game is about the same as the probability that Jamie-Lynn Spears was going to save it 'til marriage. Some other points of interest from the conference call...

In a way, it pains me that something as trivial as Bob Costas being named host for the NHL Winter Classic between the Buffalo Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins on New Year's Day qualifies as important news for the league. But to hear the boys on NHL Live discuss it today, Costas joining the NBC broadcast lends an instant credibility to the proceedings for the casual fan. Remember when the NHL didn't need a studio talking head for its product to attain the gravitas of other professional sports? What was that, 15 years ago? The league and its surrogates pimping this Costas thing reminds me of those unavoidable ads for the new direct-to-DVD sequel to "Bring It On" that offer "a special performance by Ashley Tisdale!" as an enticement for the kiddies to rent such putrid piffle.

I'm on the fence as far as mixing Costas with hockey. As the NHL points out, he's got a history with the sport, serving as the play-by-play commentator for the Syracuse Blazers of the old Eastern Hockey League in 1973-74 and also occasionally filling in for Dan Kelly on KMOX's St. Louis Blues radiocasts near the end of the decade and into the 1980s. But that deadpan, sanctimonious act he's known for is the last thing an NHL broadcast needs -- they're usually more arid than diet rice cakes to begin with -- and he won't have the supporting cast he has on NBC Sunday Night Football in America to liven things up. I know I'm in the minority on this, but I didn't mind Chris Berman leading the round table during the Stanley Cup Finals a few years back; I'd rather listen to Fred Flintstone talk puck than a buttoned-up baseball nerd.

Yet what Costas can do, better than nearly any of his peers, is make you care about what you're about to see. He's brilliant at identifying plot lines, major themes and general drama, chewing it up and regurgitating it back in a way in which everyone from the die-hards to the casual fans can appreciate it. To that end, he might be perfect for hockey: Someone who can sell the game's incredible storylines and compelling conflicts in concise, populist terms. Take a look at this dissection of Bode Miller's Olympic flop as an example of his deft touch on a sport that's not in his heavy rotation:

We've had college hockey stories on FanHouse today. We've had Detroit Red Wings stories on FanHouse today. So, naturally, we come across a story in the Detroit Free Press which reports that Ford Field could host a hockey double-header pitting Michigan against Michigan State and then the Red Wings against an opponent-to-be-named-later in the night cap. Central Collegiate Hockey Association commissioner Tom Anastos confirmed discussions about the game, which would be a test run for an eventual Frozen Four at the stadium, but said they're very preliminary:

"I don't have the Red Wings or the NHL on board ... To me, there's an order to getting something done. When you talk of an event of this magnitude, it would be naive to assume that because someone says, 'We're up for it,' that it will happen." Anastos said the Wings would need to get approval from the NHL. Then all of the parties would have to agree on a business plan.

David Goricki of The Detroit News wrote about this yesterday, with Michigan State coach Rick Comley claiming the game would be played next December and that the Toronto Maple Leafs would be Detroit's opponent. (There's a sure way to try and get that attendance close to 80,000). Recall that Michigan and Michigan State competed in the "Cold War" back in 2001, before a hockey world-record crowd of 74,554 at Spartan Stadium.

My only questions: Will an NHL game inside a temperature-controlled dome stadium have the same fanatic appeal as those icy conditions in the Heritage Classic and (we assume) next month's Winter Classic in Buffalo? And is there any way we can convince this guy on the right to come back to Ford Field with a giant "D" painted on his chest and pasties with Pavel Datsyuk's face on them?