Not since the Williamsport Outlaws of the Federal Hockey League have some many teams clamored to play an entire hockey season outdoors. But a pandemic will do crazy things to you if you’re not careful, which is why the extreme measures seem to be looked at as an option. Elliotte Friedman made mention of this in an article stating that four teams have investigated playing outdoors and three others are at least interested.

For context, the Williamsport Outlaws attempted to play their entire home schedule of the 2012-13 season at Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania while they were awaiting completion of their own rink. Oddly enough, the plan didn’t work out for the low-minor league team and they ceased operations in January of 2013 before the FHL took over and made the team a traveling team for the rest of the year. The team collected about $240,000 in debt despite average over 1,000 per game and having a decent record to get people in the stands. Bus League Hockey has a great breakdown of the Outlaws’ plight.

Granted, these are NHL teams were talking about now and it’s not like their owners don’t have the money to scrape up coin and the connections to get deals on the fields, equipment, and so-on to have outdoor games and have the ability to get some people into the stands to watch their team play. It’s a novel idea to start getting some kind of revenue into the team…even if it won’t made a dent when it comes to operation costs in the long-run. Friedman mentions as much in the article.

But when you get to it, this goes to show that teams want to play and they want to have fans around and they don’t want to go into a bubble again because no revenues for another undetermined amount of time. Sure, part of that is because they’re losing money with every day that passes, but at the same time– I’m sure they want to see some kind of normal life come back into the fold as much as anyone, corporate greed notwithstanding. If anything, the idea of maybe going to a smaller venue that’s fitted for hockey would be better, especially if jurisdictions don’t allow for people into the arenas. The cost would be less, you wouldn’t have to shell for the equipment, and so on. Sure, the broadcasts would be interesting given those small rinks may not be made out for TV; but I think that’s a first-world problem scenario to have when it comes to getting hockey back onto the ice.

Selfishly, however, I would love to see what crazy millionaire owner would play an entire season outdoors, money be damned, just to have paying customers in the stands.