NHL's Winter Classic produced horrendous ratings

This year's NHL Winter Classic was an absolute dud, recycling two teams (the Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues) that have already played in multiple outdoor games in a venue (Wrigley Field) that has already been used.

Add in a lack of marketing from the league, bizarre scheduling and the fact neither team is any good and the game went off without making a dent in the national sports discourse.

Now we have the numbers to verify and confirm what a huge dud it was. 

This year's contest produced the lowest ratings in the history of the game, averaging just around 920,000 viewers. 

That was a 16% drop from last year's game between the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken — the previous lowest-rated outdoor game — and a 48% drop from the game two years ago between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins. 

Along with the bad matchup, the NHL also played the game on New Year's Eve (when it is usually played on New Year's Day) in an attempt to avoid the College Football Playoff games. But even that backfired in the Chicago market as the game went up against the University of Illinois bowl game against South Carolina. 

The past two years are also the first two years the game has been broadcast on cable TV (TNT) instead of Network TV (it was traditionally on NBC under the old TV agreement). 

It was simply a laundry list of bad decisions, bad luck and bad circumstances.

The NHL has to take this as a wakeup call.

The game can still be popular and draw an audience. It can still be an incredible spectacle on the league's regular-season schedule. But the league needs to know to people are tired of seeing the Blackhawks, especially now that they stink, in these games, and they need to do a better job of scheduling the game and marketing to a wide audience.

The NHL failed in every aspect this year. Now we have the numbers to prove it.