Question: Now that you are heading to your third outdoor game, what have you learned about staging these events?

Renzulli: The first thing is you have to differentiate between a baseball and football stadium. We have done one and one, and they both have their own idiosyncrasies.

How are they different?

Renzulli: The first year was a scramble to put it on, but it was in a football stadium and I was accustomed to football stadiums. It was on field turf. The issues there were the weather and the crown on the field. We have to get it all level. Last year we went into a baseball stadium that was 97 years old and didn't have much infrastructure. It was a grass field and that is an issue. Any stadium you go into wants to you to maintain their field. They don't want to do anything afterward.

Isn't it impossible to put a rink in without tearing up some grass?

Renzulli: That was a big thing last year to get the Cubs to understand that we will do every-thing in our power to limit the wear and tear on the field, but when Mother Nature plays a part it's out of our control. That's exactly what happened. When we started setting up, the temperature was in the 50s to three consecutive days of below zero and snow for seven or eight days. Then we broke for Christmas, planned on shoveling out the stadium on the 26th. We did that and then the following day it was 65 degrees. Whatever snow was left was gone, eight inches on the field was gone. We lost the baseball field at that point because the grass turned to mud and all of our heavy equipment going back and forth kind of destroyed the field. But right from day one, we had told them to be prepared and put a field on hold. We didn't want to put in a new field, and we had time before spring. There were no issues.

Did you explain that scenario to Fenway officials?

Renzulli: Flash forward to this year and we went into Fenway and said the exact same thing. We had conversations with them a year earlier and they were concerned about their field. And we told them if you want the game this is one of things you have to deal with. We got past that now.

Are there any issues to making an outdoor rink that are particular to the Fenway facility?

Renzulli: The Fenway field drops off from pitcher's mound to first base and to second base a couple of inches, but the other side to the third it's more like five inches. So our big concern is getting a level surface to start with. It's like building a house, you have to start level.

Do stadium officials allow the NHL to what it wants to do in terms of decorating the stadium?

Renzulli: Last year, the big thing was we wanted to use the ivy (on the outfield wall) and they said, 'no' you can't touch it. So we had to protect it, and in order to do that we built a dummy wall and they recreated the ivy. But that gave us a storage area we were lacking. But it gave us the same look.

In terms of ambience, is the baseball stadium preferable to a football stadium because of the intimacy?

Renzulli: It depends upon whom you ask. In a baseball stadium, we can get you closer to the action, especially in the corners. But we have to maintain a passage on those corners of about 20 feet. We have to have that space because of things that have to move in an emergency. We take the rink to as close as we can to the fans in a baseball stadium. In a football stadium, it's a little bit different. When you want to use all of the seats, you have to center it on the field.

In Wrigley, you worked the ivy into the ambience. Will you be working the Green Monster left field wall into the ambience for the Fenway game?

A: Absolutely. It's bigger than life. Whether we tried or not, it's there. As we go into a stadium, we remember we are there for a reason: There is a lot of history in the ballparks that we went into last year and we are going into this year. And even going back to Ralph Wilson Stadium … as we go into cities we try to pull together a look that gives fans a feel for the ballpark or city.

Have the league's ice-making capabilities improved since the Buffalo game on Jan. 1, 2008?

Renzulli: It's similar, but the difference is it's new and it's ours. For the first game, we had a mat system. Once you got the field leveled with sand, you rolled out this big PVC mat out with piping in it. You would fill that top edge with sand and then you would start spraying water on it to create ice. We now have a state-of-the-art plate system. We have 84 panels that are 30 feet by 33 inches wide that create the rink. They are solid aluminum panels with piping through it. Once we get it level, we drop those down and start to make ice. Our (control) trailer was custom made for us and it's the most state-of-the-art system we have in this country. It has all the bells and whistles and tools so (ice guru) Dan Craig can monitor the ice temperature at different spots on the rink on his BlackBerry. Even if he is in his hotel and something happens late at night, he can look at his BlackBerry and know exactly what's going on.

When will the NHL start making the Fenway rink?

Renzulli: We go into Fenway Dec. 10.

Are there any special challenges to the NHL playing in Fenway?

Renzulli: It's harder dealing with a stadium that is dropped into a residential/retail component of the city. There is no extra space around Fenway. At least around Wrigley, we had a couple of parking lots that we controlled. We don't have that in Fenway. We have a small broadcast compound, and we are trying to squeeze all of the little components of the game in and around different facilities. That's the only thing that makes it more a difficult area. It's an urban area, and that has pluses and minuses. We have people who can walk over and we have the Red Sox store that attracts people and there are a lot of restaurants and bars. The area is different. At Ralph Wilson, we were out in the middle of nowhere and we were surrounded by parking lots.

Two months out, how would compare the buzz in Boston for this game compared to the buzz last year in Chicago?

Renzulli: I would say it's greater. From what we are hearing, especially from the Bruins and Red Sox, the phone is ringing off the hook. Everyone is playing an angle trying to get tickets. We had more than 307,000 people sign up for our lottery for tickets. (That's up more than 70,000 from last year.) There is a lot of buzz up there. We were there last week and we met with the city, fire and police officials and they are saying this is the biggest thing that has come to Boston outside of Game 7 of the World Series.

If it were a bigger venue, how many tickets could you sell to an outdoor NHL game in Boston?

Renzulli: It's an interesting question. I don't know what the number is. It would all come down to the cost of the ticket. If we could bring it down, you could probably get 100,000-plus in the right environment. It's something that we joke about all the time: When are we going to do a game with 100,000-plus?

		The NHL announces on July 15 that Boston's Fenway Park will be the site of this season's Winter Classic. It will be the second consecutive year that the league has held the event in a baseball stadium. By Brian Snyder, Reuters