The New Best Place For An Outdoor Hockey Game: A Roman Amphitheater

Yes, yes, the next Winter Classic will be at the Big House, and it'll look great with 120,000 freezing and screaming fans. Do you realize we're falling desperately behind the Europeans in the all-important "playing sports where sports aren't meant to be played" race? Why, just last month, a Russian minor league announced plans to hold a hockey game on an aircraft carrier. And the Croats are one-upping even that, planning a pair of exhibition games in a 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheater on the shores of the Adriatic.

Medveščak Zagreb will play two games at the Pula Arena, a well-preserved amphitheater that hosted gladiatorial combat until well into the seventh century. The bloodsport will return this fall, with teams visiting from Vienna and Ljubljana for games in front of 5,000 spectators. America (and Canada), we need to get on this. We need novelty hockey games at the North Pole, atop Washington's bald head on Mount Rushmore, inside a space station, on very thin ice in upstate New York in late November, and even, I don't know, somewhere bizarre like Glendale, Ariz.

[ Croatian Times]