The Ottawa Senators want to host an outdoor hockey game in 2017 to commemorate the NHL’s 100th and Canada’s 150th anniversary, according to a report in the Ottawa Business Journal.
The idea is to have the Senators face off against the Montreal Canadiens, according to Ottawa Marriott general manager Daniel Laliberté, a member of the committee helping plan the city’s offerings for 2017.
That would replicate the first game played 100 years earlier in December 1917 under the banner of a brand new organization formed a month earlier – the National Hockey League.
Cyril Leeder, the president of the Senators, declined to confirm or deny whether the team has made a formal request of the league. However team spokesman Chris Moore said in an e-mail they would be willing to speak in the future “if the possibility of an outdoor game in Ottawa gains any significant momentum.”
Two outdoor NHL games (called the “Heritage Classic”) have been played in Canada, the first in 2003 in Edmonton, the second eight years later in Calgary.
If Ottawa were to host one in 2017, it would be played at the renovated Frank Clair Stadium (see image).
The original Sens were one of the four founding members of the NHL, along with the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers and Toronto Hockey Club.