Toronto Maple Leafs: 3 Outdoor Venues That Should Host NHL Games

The Toronto Maple Leafs have played in some cool outdoor games before, but there are plenty of untapped markets.

If you were lucky enough to attend the Toronto Maple Leafs outdoor game at BMO Field, The Big House or Navy–Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The conditions aren’t great for the players or the fans, but the idea of being surrounded by 100,000 people to watch a hockey game outside is something you’ll never forget.

Over the past two decades, outdoor/novelty games, have been more popular in the NHL and throughout professional sports. In fact, the MLB just recently developed a “Field of Dreams” game where the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox faced off on the same diamond as the movie was filmed.

It was a spectacular event and it drew a different audience to a game that many people probably wouldn’t have watched otherwise. As such, the NHL needs to find something similar and create a brand new event that attracts new viewers.

The NHL has played games in NFL, NCAA and MLB venues before, but they haven’t done anything extreme.

The NHL could copy the “Field of Dreams” game completely and find a rink in Charlestown to replicate “Slapshot” and the Charlestown Chiefs, but the rinks they filmed the movie in are not in the town they created. They filmed the movie in the Utica Comets and Syracuse Crunch rinks, and those venues are too small to hold a big event like this.

As a result, the NHL should look at these three venues to hold an outdoor game, and it would be quite exciting if the Toronto Maple Leafs got to play in one of them.