Could a professional sports league bring an event to Alcatraz in the middle of San Francisco Bay? One writer at the Athletic is hoping so.
The Athletic’s senior NHL writer, Mark Lazerus, wrote a piece on Thursday pondering the future of the league’s outdoor games, which have been played in the open air at some of North America’s most prominent venues, such as an iced-over Fenway Park in Boston. Lazerus even created a pie-in-the-sky wish list for where hockey can take some of its outdoor games in the future.
According to Lazerus, the specific outdoor game that NHL president of content and events Steve Mayer, who is the mastermind behind the league’s outdoor games, gets asked about the most is actually the pair of games from the shores of Lake Tahoe in the fanless 2020-21 season.
“That reinforces how special that particular game was,” Mayer told the Athletic. “We stepped outside the box, took risks and we spent money. And I think we created something unforgettable.”
Of course, the two Tahoe games were also quite a disaster, as sunshine melted the ice on the playing surface and forced lengthy delays for both games. But even with those problems, the visuals were spectacular and are easily the most noteworthy NHL regular-season games in recent memory.
The NHL has been regularly playing outdoor hockey games since 2008, but for the second time in three years, the league is returning the Winter Classic to a previous venue at Wrigley Field. With an increasingly packed slate of sports around New Year’s Day and the novelty of these games wearing off, Lazerus pitched that the NHL take its outdoor games away from the baseball and football stadiums and bring them to unique settings like it did in Tahoe.
Lazerus wrote up a wish list for potential outdoor game venues, with Canada’s Lake Louise holding the top spot. But at No. 10 on the list was Alcatraz, with a potential Sharks-Avalanche game schemed up for the island.
“Imagine the views. Imagine the special jerseys the team could come up with,” Lazerus wrote. “Imagine referee Wes McCauley pausing right before the opening puck drop and saying into his microphone, ‘Macklin [Celebrini], Nathan [MacKinnon] … Welcome to The Rock.’”
There is at least some sports precedence for the idea. “The Rock” used to host softball games on-site when it was still active as a prison, and Red Bull brought a one-on-one basketball competition called “King of the Rock” to the middle of the Bay for a few years in the 2010s, after the location became a national park site. Hosting an NHL-sized rink would be trickier, but the parade ground might have enough space to be able to make it work.
Alcatraz wasn’t the only California location mentioned, either. Lazerus had Santa Monica Pier at No. 8 on his wish list and had Yosemite Valley — two of the most touristed spots in the entire state — as an honorable mention. The Alcatraz one seemed to tantalize Lazerus most, though, as he even noted the first outdoor NHL game took place in a prison back in 1954.
Is it likely? Almost assuredly not. Mayer told the Athletic the NHL loves to “bring the game to as many people as possible,” and a game on Alcatraz would likely have little to no space for fans to attend.
But seeing the San Jose Sharks playing a hockey game near the water that helped give them their name, with the Golden Gate Bridge shining in the background? That’s quite the visual to fantasize about.
