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If all goes according to plan, Chicago Blackhawks forward Nick Foligno should be able to boast a feat that few athletes outside of baseball players and old football fans can boast: playing a professional game at Fenway. Park and Wrigley Field.
That’s Foligno and teammate Taylor Hall, assuming he returns from knee surgery next season.
The two played together as the Boston Bruins when Fenway hosted the NHL Winter Classic on January 2, 2023.
They could play together again when the Classic returns to Wrigley for the first time since Jan. 1, 2009. The league announced last week that Wrigley will host the Classic for the second time in 2025 on a date yet to be determined. It will be the Hawks’ third time hosting, including the 2019 game at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana.
“It would be great,” Foligno said. “We are excited to have the opportunity to showcase our city, and especially at Wrigley. It is a stadium and a franchise with so much history. We’re excited when that day comes, but there’s a lot going on here, so we haven’t had a chance to talk about it.
“Knowing how much fun Fenway was two years ago, I’m looking forward to seeing it.”
Foligno continued talking about Wrigley when he recalled a recent time when he took his family ice skating during the Winterland festival on Gallagher Way on the grounds of Wrigley Field.
His eyes widened when he realized.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess I already skated at Wrigley. There you go”.
Foligno spoke to the Tribune about memories of the Winter Classic, while Hawks and Chicago Cubs executives talked about how a hockey team, a stadium and a league quickly negotiated to bring the NHL’s outdoor exhibition back to Chicago.
1. Looking to the future with a ten-year plan.
Hawks president of business operations Jaime Faulkner said that since taking the job in December 2020, the Hawks began mapping out a 10-year plan with the NHL, trying to align signature events with when players star could retire or when the Hawks could retire, to put it bluntly: okay again. “Connor (Bedard) has accelerated everything,” Faulkner said.
“We actually had no intention of holding the Winter Classic so early,” he said. “We were talking to them about the possibility of making it our centenary year (in 2026-27). Then we realized how much work is involved, after talking to Boston, to achieve the centennial year.
But that got the Hawks and the NHL talking more about the Classic.
“It’s very difficult to get a Winter Classic,” Faulkner said. “The city has to be on board. Your venue has to agree and the team has to agree to all the different agreements that were in place.
“So, to be honest, we didn’t do this until probably a week before we announced it,” Faulkner said. “It was in the air.”
2. Don’t call it the “Faulkner Classic.”
Jaime’s husband is Cubs executive vice president of sales and marketing Colin Faulkner, but you could hear the chill in his voice at the suggestion that the “Faulkner Classic” might have been staged during the table, perhaps after They found out who got the last one. slice of cake.
“The Faulkner classic,” he scoffed. “I don’t know if (she) or I ever referred to it that way. I heard someone in the (Cubs) office tell me that. “They thought it was funny.”
Colin Faulkner might have had designs on the Classic for longer than Jaime Faulkner.
Since the Cubs completed 10 years of renovations at the stadium with a rededication in August 2021, city executives and officials have been envisioning major sporting events there.
Aldo. Bennett Lawson, 44, told the Tribune in an email: “The Cubs have made investments over the years to make their campus and our neighborhood a destination during the holiday season, and we look forward to seeing the tourism opportunities.” and additional economic benefits of this historic event. will bring to the community.
“The Blackhawks and Cubs are great partners for our city, and I can’t wait to celebrate a Hawks win in District 44 next year.”
“We’ve always had a desire to bring it back to Wrigley Field,” said Colin Faulkner, who said the club also had Northwestern University football games in mind.
“We renovated the entire stadium, so we have a heat trace to make sure the pipes don’t freeze and the bathrooms work. …Last time (in 2009), we brought in temporary video boards for the game. This time, we have real video boards and club spaces.”
This year’s Classic took place at T-Mobile Park in Seattle. Last year it took place at Fenway.
“Wrigley Field didn’t emerge as a potential venue until they had so much success returning to Fenway. And that was very well done,” Jaime Faulkner said. “The grades were excellent. Now they had beautiful weather that day. Everything was fantastic for that game. And they started asking, ‘Do we want to go back to Wrigley Field?’ So as we were having conversations, it made a lot of sense to us.”
The three parties had to iron out the details and discuss revenue sharing.
“There’s a set amount of dollars that will be spent on this game,” Colin Faulkner said. “The Blackhawks are missing a home game at the United Center to bring the game here, so they need to bounce back on that. So there is a negotiation that the Blackhawks had to have directly with the league.
“And then there’s a negotiation we had to have with the league” to lease Wrigley, he said.
Colin Faulkner said it helped to have connections to speed up the process.
“When (Jaime) and the league started talking about the game, she obviously let me know that they wanted to have a conversation about the Winter Classic. And luckily, she put me in touch with people there.
“And interestingly enough, before I was on the Cubs, I worked for the Stars in Dallas for 10 years and participated in the 2007 NHL All-Star Game in Dallas. “A lot of the same people who were there for the 2007 All-Star Game are the ones participating in the Winter Classic.”
3. Field of dreams, part 2.
Foligno said the little touches of the story stuck with him in his experience at Fenway.
“You walk into these stadiums and some of them are new, but this one has the guts of these winning teams and you can still see the brick outside of the original Fenway and in the clubhouse. … Then you come to Wrigley and you have the exact same experience in some ways, in this old stadium with all this nostalgia.”
Even playing in a place like Fenway took on an air of mystery.
“It was a day game and then it became night,” Foligno said. “And you had that really cool feeling of (being) under the lights when you were a kid and at Fenway. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when you’re under the lights of that stadium” at Wrigley.
“I was there (at Wrigley), I was lucky enough to watch the game in the summer (this was years ago) and see the fog come up one night with the lights on, and I thought, ‘This place is like out of place.’ . ‘Field of dreams.'”
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