The NHL Winter Classic (French: La Classique hivernale de la LNH) is an annual outdoor ice hockey game played during the National Hockey League's (NHL) regular season on or around New Year's Day.

The most recent game was played during the 2024–25 NHL season at Wrigley Field, with the St. Louis Blues defeating the Chicago Blackhawks 6−2.

The 2014 game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings set a new NHL attendance record of 105,491.

Along with the NHL All-Star Game, the Winter Classic is considered one of the NHL's premier events; with matchups generally booked to showcase the league's most popular teams and players, the event garners the league its highest attendance and among its highest television ratings.

The event is typically promoted as a return to the sport's outdoor roots, meant to evoke memories of pond hockey.

[1] The Winter Classic as a television event was presented by NBC Sports Executive VP Jon Miller.

[3][4] The first Winter Classic was held January 1, 2008, between the Buffalo Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, New York.

Outdoor effects of wind and sun glare may give an unfair advantage to one team and so the NHL sometimes modifies the third and overtime periods.

The 2012 Winter Classic in Philadelphia was not played on New Year's Day, as that fell on a Sunday in 2012 and conflicted with the NFL's final week of regular season games.

The sixth Winter Classic was scheduled for Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor in 2013, with the Detroit Red Wings hosting the Toronto Maple Leafs in an Original Six matchup.

[7] However, on January 24, 2014, an NHL source reported that the certified attendance, based on tickets scanned at the venue, fell short of the world record.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the first Winter Classic, the NHL announced on May 10, 2017, that the Buffalo Sabres would take part in the 2018 game against the New York Rangers at Citi Field.

On November 18, 2017, the NHL announced that the Chicago Blackhawks would host the Boston Bruins in the Winter Classic scheduled for January 1, 2019.

The game was played at Notre Dame Stadium, in Notre Dame, Indiana, and was the first instance of a Winter Classic being played in a different state and media market from the host team—the stadium is located less than 100 mi (160 km) from Chicago but is served by television stations in South Bend.

[16] With a temperature of -5.7 °F at puck drop, the 2022 Winter Classic became the coldest outdoor game in NHL history as the Blues won 6–4.

As ESPN has a full slate of college bowl games on New Year's Day, TNT will hold rights to the Winter Classic throughout the entire broadcast contract.

[a] Due to Seattle's rainy climate that may affect ice conditions, organizers planned on closing the T-Mobile Park roof in case of heavy rainfall.

[23] The game ended with the Kraken becoming the first team to earn a shutout in a Winter Classic, defeating the Golden Knights 3–0.

Non-sports venues like the National Mall or Central Park have also been proposed, but the present logistical challenges make the league unlikely to want to overcome with the other options available.

Winter Classic viewership peaked in 2011 (due to it being rescheduled to primetime) and, with the exception of one-year bumps in 2014 and 2019, has been in a mostly steady decline since then.

[57] The 2025 Winter Classic took place on New Year's Eve in an attempt to avoid competing with the newly-expanded College Football Playoff bowl games.

The series, entitled 24/7: Road to the NHL Winter Classic, gave HBO exclusive access to the teams that were participating in the game.

[73] For the 2022 edition, the Road to the Winter Classic was aired as a five or eight-minute segment on the NHL on TNT postgame show as opposed to a standalone episode during the Greenburg era.

[75] Its popularity in the United States led to the American Hockey League adopting a similar contest in 2010, the AHL Outdoor Classic, which it continued to organize each season through 2017–18.

Both the Winter Classic and the earlier Cold War contest helped repopularize outdoor hockey at the college and university level, and several college organizations abd minor and junior hockey leagues hold outdoor games each year.