Jeff Bennett's Blog

This Sunday Central Catholic and Cranbrook, in Detroit, Michigan, will mark the 75th year of ice hockey competition between the two schools with an outdoor game at 2 p.m. at Clark Park.  According to records, the first regular-season game between the two schools took place in February 1937, with Cranbrook a 4-2 victor.  The game was regularly held outdoors, but according to Cranbrook archives, poor ice conditions prohibited the teams from squaring off on a regular basis until the 1940s.

The NHL has enjoyed three successful Winter Classics, the most recent at Fenway Park, with the Boston Bruins hosting the Philadelphia Flyers.  They kept the ice up at Fenway long enough to let many youth teams play, offer public skating and also last weeks BU-BC hockey game.  I think there is demand to do this annually in hockey hotbed Boston.  I wish they would play several high school games as part of this as well.

I have posted about many of the country’s oldest schoolboy football rivalries.  It is great to celebrate such an old schoolboy hockey rivalry.  Hockey played outdoors is the way the game was meant to be played.  This is just great.  Hoping for cold weather in Detroit this weekend for the game.