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Woodshed burgers edmonton November 22nd, 2003, the Edmonton Oilers hosted the inaugural Heritage Classic — the first outdoor game in NHL history. And I’m hearing that 20 years later the Oilers will once again be hosts of the Heritage Classic. The game is scheduled to be played in October 2023.

The date hasn’t been finalized and neither has the opponent. But it should be the Calgary Flames. The plan is to have an alumni game as well, similar to what they did in 2003. The Oilers organization set the standard for outdoor games in 2003, but its initial plan wasn’t to have an NHL game.

It was an idea that grew during many conversations. Patrick Laforge this morning via the phone. Laforge was the President of the Oilers in 2003 and was heavily involved in the planning. We were looking for a knock-it-out-of-the-park idea.

Then Cal Nichols, Allan Watt, and myself attended the 2001 All-star game in LA. We were disappointed on the plane ride home and that’s when we started thinking of other ideas. We started thinking about big ideas and I mentioned the Toronto practice. We started planning in 2001, and until we googled outdoor hockey, we didn’t know about the upcoming Michigan game. Originally, we were thinking it would only be an alumni game.

We were thinking about outdoor areas like Hawrelak park and other places, but the engineers said if you had too many fans converge on the outdoor lakes it wouldn’t work. Then we thought about Commonwealth, and we spoke to Wayne Gretzky and he loved the idea. We mentioned it to Gary Bettman and there was no push back. The NHLPA and league were entering negotiations for a new CBA and the relationship wasn’t great, which led to the 2004 lockout. Laforge and the Oilers were able to get both the NHLPA and the NHL on board, but there were challenges. Then we had to quietly go to the NHL and ask for a home game v. Montreal in November between the 18th-22nd.