Leonsis, Bettman tout hockey's Winter Classic Jan. 1 in D.C. at luncheon

The capital of the United States will become the capital of hockey on New Year’s Day when Washington, D.C., hosts the National Hockey League’s wildly popular annual Winter Classic, a game that will be played in the way the sport originated -- outdoors in shivering cold.

“There is no better way for us to start 2015,” longtime NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told a Dec. 5 luncheon audience at the National Press Club, where he appeared with Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis to promote the game.

The game will pit Leonsis’s Capitals against the Chicago Black Hawks at Washington Nationals Park. Last year’s Classic drew more than 105,000 fans at University of Michigan Stadium, and the event annually boasts soaring television ratings.

The attractiveness of the nation’s capital, the opportunity to make "an impact on the community and the league,” and the Capitals’ large fan base “made us comfortable that we could sell out the venue" and award the 2015 Classic to Washington, Bettman said.

He said that Winter Classic games have become so popular “that every city and every club wants [to host] one.”

For Leonsis, bringing the Classic to Washington fulfills an eight-year dream.“ He said he “fell in love” with the concept of the outdoor game “even before the first puck was dropped” at the first Winter Classic in 2008 in Buffalo.

Leonsis appeared with Bettman in a unique format unlike traditional National Press Club luncheons. Seated in easy chairs in a relaxed conversation with Club President Myron Belkind, they touched on many subjects. Behind them rested the huge Stanley Cup, the NHL’s iconic championship trophy. Many audience members stood in line to photograph it after the luncheon.

Asked by Bettman to reflect on owning an NHL team, Leonsis called it a “social responsibility” important to the community. He contrasted the attention given to his sports teams -- he also is majority owner of the National Basketball Association’s Washington Wizards, the women’s NBA Washington Mystics and the Verizon Centers arena – to that at AOL, a much bigger entity where he formerly was a top executive.

At AOL, he noted, “when we'd launch a new piece of software that would do $4 billion in revenues the first year, we'd get a [small] writeup in the Post. But with sports teams, he said, "we trade a third-line player and it's big news."

Washington’s sports teams, Leonsis said, are a “defining institution” that he equated with the city’s universities and “iconic real estate.” Construction of the Verizon Center, he added, transformed a depressed area of downtown and has led to similar booming development in the area around Nationals Park. “There are more cranes here than in any city on earth,” he said.

Leonsis expressed enthusiasm for bringing the Olympic Games to Washington, calling it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to “re-energize the city.”

In a discussion of the NHL, Bettman said the league has many requests from cities for new franchises, but has no plans to expand beyond its current 30 teams. He also defended the league’s controversial lockouts of its players union, three of which have occurred during his 21-year league leadership.

Reading the exit question from the audience, Belkind asked Leonsis – who in a previous luncheon appearance at the Club expressed optimism about the Capitals soon winning a Stanley Cup championship – why that hasn’t happened.

“It’s hard. It’s humbling,” Leonsis answered. “But we’ll keep at it and eventually get there.”