It’s time for the NHL to bring back Christmas Day games

For many sports fans, once the presents have been opened and the dinner cooked and eaten, the holidays usually surround a television set featuring a marquee game or two (or more).

Thanksgiving Day is for the NFL. College football claims most of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

However, on Christmas Day — amid the construction of snowmen and sledding and dreams of fluffy, white snow — we sit down to watch … basketball?

Nothing against the NBA on Christmas Day, which has its entertaining moments. But images of treetops glistening and hearing sleigh bells in the snow don’t exactly match up with a sport played indoors in shorts and tank tops.

Even the Olympics define basketball as a summer sport.

Aside from the occasional NFL matchup or college bowl game, the NBA is basically the only option for Christmas Day viewing.

But that wasn’t always the case. For decades, the NHL hosted games on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day — sometimes featuring the same team in back-to-back days.

Since 1971, however, the NHL hasn’t hosted a game on Christmas Day. The following year, the league nixed Christmas Eve, giving way to the current schedule structure that features a holiday break from Dec. 24-26.

A few years ago, former Los Angeles Kings center Butch Goring explained to NHL.com why the break makes sense to him:

“It’s a time when you’re not really in the mood to play hockey. You grow up as kids; the 24th, 25th, even Boxing Day in Canada is the 26th. It’s a time to relax and enjoy what you did the night before, recover from what you did the night before. When you grow up with that concept, it’s tough to get yourself in the mood.”

But this seems like an old school, if not antiquated, viewpoint for a league struggling to hold onto much popularity in the United States.

According to a poll released in August of more than 6,500 adults in the U.S., just 5 percent said the NHL was their favorite sport to watch — half of the NBA’s share and just two points higher than Major League Soccer.

Of course, there are myriad reasons why the sport’s popularity has waned over the years. But perhaps the NHL would be better served in marketing itself not so much as an athletic competition but an entertainment spectacle.

And returning the sport to Christmas Day could be a major step in the right direction.

The NHL already has the blueprint. Since the return of regularly scheduled outdoor games in 2008 with the Winter Classic, the league has turned what would ordinarily have been run-of-the-mill regular-season matchups into must-see events — including the Colorado Avalanche and Los Angeles Kings coming up on Feb. 15 at the Air Force Academy’s Falcon Stadium.

At the very least, the NHL would be able to give Christmas Day viewers an option over watching LeBron James and company play each Dec. 25.

If things turn out, the league could very well give the NBA a run for its money, especially on a day in which the eyes of sports fans would be focused solely on hockey for a change.

So, what do you say NHL? Can we bring back hockey to Christmas Day after a five-decade hiatus?

Maybe if enough of us put it on our list for Santa next Christmas.

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