![]() The 2014 NHL Winter Classic, held at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, set a new NHL attendance record of 105,491. The 2008 NHL Winter Classic, held in Buffalo, set an NHL attendance record of 71,217. The league followed it up in 2008 when it inaugurated the NHL Winter Classic as an annual event to be held on New Year's Day. Though the game was played in frigid temperatures that went as low as −19 ☌ (−2 ☏), it drew over 57,000 fans and was hailed as a success. The NHL's first regular season outdoor game ensued: the 2003 Heritage Classic, hosted by the Edmonton Oilers, who lost by a 4–3 score to the Montreal Canadiens. ![]() Held in 2001, the Cold War launched the modern outdoor game phenomenon ![]() The game was held at Michigan State's Spartan Stadium, with the hockey rink set up in the middle of the football field. That year, Michigan State University and the University of Michigan played to a 3–3 tie in an outdoor game known as the Cold War before 74,554 fans. While the New York Rangers and the Los Angeles Kings played an NHL exhibition game in 1991 outside Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the modern trend for outdoor competition began in 2001. In 1954, the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League (NHL) played an exhibition game on an outdoor ice surface against the inmates of Michigan's Marquette Branch Prison. The attendance at that game was approximately 55,000, a number that stood as a record for more than 40 years. Games at the World Championships were occasionally played outdoors, including the 1957 gold medal game between the Soviet Union and Sweden at the Lenin Stadium in Moscow. While the first Olympic hockey tournament, held in 1920, was played indoors, games at the first Winter Olympics in 1924 were the first of several such tournaments to be played outdoors. In fact, the first indoor game, held in 1875, was a novelty at the time, yet after that the game moved inside. In the early history of hockey, games were played outdoors on rivers, lakes, and other naturally occurring ice surfaces. To compensate for the varying weather conditions at outdoor ice hockey games, the teams may switch sides after each half of a period. Staging a Vysshaya liga game on the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov has been considered as well. ![]() Ice hockey, however, has been played at Stade Roland Garros, the venue of the French Open in tennis. While other indoor sports such as basketball have been able to use outdoor tennis courts and even aircraft carriers for outdoor games, this is rarely possible in ice hockey because a regulation rink is generally much wider and longer than the playing surface available in either of those venues. The popularity of outdoor games has resulted in attendance records in several leagues, and the current world record total of 104,173 was set at The Big Chill at the Big House, a December 2010 National Collegiate Athletic Association game between the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Playing hockey games outdoors-in soccer, football and baseball stadiums-is an increasingly popular trend for junior, college, professional and international competitions in the 21st century. The University of Michigan and Michigan State University set a world record for attendance in 2010
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