NEW YORK -- The NHL's annual Winter Classic is billed as a return to hockey's roots, eschewing a covered arena for brisk cold and unpredictable elements. The kind of "pond hockey" Buffalo Sabres star Jack Eichel played as a child in North Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
But then one notices the 45,000-plus fans, and the rolls of cotton mimicking snow, and the professional baseball locker room where the players lace up their skates instead of using an old log on the side of a lake, and the television cameras filming a documentary about their preparations, and all the trappings that make this a freakish, hyperbolic imitation of "the boys-on-the-frozen-lake" aesthetic.