SEATTLE — The way more than a few of the 47,313 fans at T-Mobile Park on Monday seemed to view it, the first day of 2024 may be a hard one for the rest of the year to top.
“It’s super fun and festive,” said Katie Cobb as she stood overlooking an outfield area usually populated by Major League Baseball players but on this day filled with the trappings of the NHL Winter Classic, including a stage where the band Heart performed, as well as the rink itself. “Everybody is out having a good time watching a hockey game outside. It’s just fun.”
Made even better by almost perfect weather — 46 degrees with no sign of the fog that cleared an hour or so before puck drop, with sun peeking through instead — as well as the Kraken beating the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights 3-0.
“It’s fun to see the Kraken be part of such an historical hockey event and to have it here,” said Cobb, who grew up in Renton but now lives in Portland and attended the game Monday with her husband, Tanner, and 6-month-old baby, Finley.
At least one spectator with some knowledge of the city’s sports history — former longtime sports talk radio host Mike Gastineau — thought the day ranked at the top of the list of Seattle athletic events.
Gastineau bought tickets with his wife, Renee, as soon as they were available and sat in the 200 section watching as Seattle hosted its first Winter Classic 16 years after the first one was held in Orchard Park, New York.
“It’s fantastic,” he said during the first intermission. “You think of all the moving parts they had to have work for this. They had to have good weather, [the team] be good, people buy tickets that are pricey. All of it came together — big house, big atmosphere. It’s really perfect, I think, from a fan perspective.”
How perfect?
Gastineau, who arrived in Seattle in 1991, thought for a second and decided it was “in the top three or four events in Seattle. This place is jammed — I didn’t expect that. I don’t know if I expected it to be completely sold out. And it’s such a perfect day. Comparing it to other events, certainly the NFC Championship games that have been here have been spectacular and the big Sonics playoff games and the Mariners playoff runs were great. But for a regular-season event, this might be at the top.”
He was going to get no argument from Jacob Poteet, who stood in the Hit It Here Café during the second period marveling at it all. Poteet played for a while with the Seattle Junior Hockey Association and has been a fan of the sport for years — enough so that while he says he’s a Kraken fan, he also likes Vegas and on this day was wearing a jersey of Knights star Jack Eichel.
“To think that we finally brought a cool tradition like the Winter Classic to Seattle says a lot,” he said. “It’s just an awesome experience all around.”
Indeed, the performances by Heart, who played their classics “Barracuda” and “Magic Man,” and Sir Mix-a-Lot, who performed “Jump on It,” as well as introductions of a handful of Seattle sports greats, only added to the holiday atmosphere.
Katie Adams, a teacher and athletic director at Kirkland Middle School, enjoyed a unique perspective selling tickets for the 50-50 raffle benefiting the One Roof Foundation.
Before the game began, she sold tickets above the stairs to the center field bleachers and watched as person after person looked in awe as they first witnessed the transformation of what is generally a baseball stadium into a hockey rink.
“It was really cool watching everybody walk in and be like, ‘Wow, this looks so cool,'” she said. “So many people have seen this as a baseball stadium, but they haven’t seen this like this, and it was really cool seeing them walk up the stairs and see their eyes light up, seeing how changed it all was and how cool it all is.”
Adams, who works lots of other area sporting events as well, compared the atmosphere to the MLB All-Star Game last July.
“Everyone is super friendly, super hyped,” she said.
To Gastineau, it reaffirmed something he said he’s learned throughout his three-plus decades in the area.
“Don’t doubt Seattle fans,” he said. “You give them a good event and a good team, they want to come see it. They want to be a part of it.”
As Tanner Cobb watched, he recalled in his younger years attending the first event in the stadium when the Mariners played the opener here on July 15, 1999.
“It’s fun to have an old-school game in here,” he said. “We came to the first Mariners game, and now they are playing the Winter Classic. It’s pretty cool.”
About the only one who might not have gotten what all the fuss was about was little Finley Cobb, who in the arms of his father, Tanner, appeared to be dozing off.
“He’s trying to take a nap right now so, you know, he’s having a day,” Katie Cobb said.
One he may not remember but figures to be told about for years.
