2011 Heritage Classic
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| Date | February 20, 2011 | |||||||||||||||
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| Arena | McMahon Stadium | |||||||||||||||
| City | Calgary, Alberta, Canada | |||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 41,022 | |||||||||||||||
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The 2011 Heritage Classic was a regular season outdoor National Hockey League (NHL) game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Calgary Flames. The game was played at McMahon Stadium in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on February 20, 2011. The Flames defeated the Canadiens by a score of 4–0 before a crowd of 41,022 spectators. It was just the second time in six NHL outdoor games that the home team won.
It was the second Heritage Classic game, held seven seasons after the original. It was also the first time the NHL held two outdoor games in one season, as it followed the 2011 NHL Winter Classic in Pittsburgh. In spite of criticism that playing two such games in a season would lessen the spectacle, the Heritage Classic eclipsed all previous NHL outdoor games in sponsorship. The game's title sponsor was Tim Hortons.
Calgary goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff was named the game's first star after making 39 saves to record the first shutout in an NHL outdoor game. His teammates Rene Bourque and Alex Tanguay were the second and third stars respectively. Weather conditions were a major story during the game, as the wind chill made the temperature feel like −25 °C (−13 °F) on the ice, and forced the arena staff to manually flood the ice between periods to avoid damaging the ice surface.
The weekend featured numerous other games, which the Flames branded as the "Faceoff in the Foothills." It began on Friday, February 18 with an American Hockey League (AHL) matchup that saw Calgary's top minor league affiliate, the Abbotsford Heat, lose to the Oklahoma City Barons 3–1 at the Scotiabank Saddledome. An alumni game was held on the Saturday between a team composed mostly of players on Calgary's 1989 Stanley Cup-winning team against alumni of the Canadiens. It ended on Family Day Monday when the Regina Pats defeated the Calgary Hitmen in a Western Hockey League (WHL) game at McMahon that set a junior world attendance record of 20,888.
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