Favorite memory of season: 2020 NHL Winter Classic

The NHL season was paused on March 12 due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus. During the break in the action, NHL.com writers will each look back at his or her favorite memory of the season so far. Today, senior writer Dan Rosen writes about the 2020 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic at Cotton Bowl Stadium on Jan. 1.

The Winter Classic has been my favorite regular-season event since it debuted in snowy Buffalo on Jan. 1, 2008. It seems like every year the annual New Year's celebration put on by the NHL gets bigger and better.

The League hit another home run this year.

"If I was out there watching that game or I was watching this on television I would say, 'That was awesome, man,'" Dallas Stars coach Rick Bowness said after his team defeated the Nashville Predators 4-2 at the Cotton Bowl. "The whole thing was awesome."

Before we get into all the ancillary stuff around the game, and that means pig races and square dancing because you can't have an event on the Texas State Fairgrounds without both, the actual game itself was a classic.

The Stars scored four unanswered goals, including three in the third period, to win in front of a sold-out crowd of 85,630, the second-highest attendance for an NHL game in history behind the 2014 Winter Classic at Michigan Stadium (105,491).

Mattias Janmark, Alexander Radulov and Andrej Sekera scored in the first 6:35 of the third period. The crowd's roar when Radulov scored to make it 3-2 Dallas at 5:06 was Texas-sized.

"That was the loudest [I've heard a crowd] when I've been on the ice," Stars forward Tyler Seguin said. "That was cool."

So was everything surrounding the ice, everything that turns a regular-season game into a major sporting event.

The Stars arrived dressed as Texas cowboys, complete with belt buckles, hats and bolo ties. Fans ate Fletcher's Corny Dogs and fried Oreos, went on rides like the Texas Star Ferris wheel, and played carnival games at the Truly Hard Seltzer NHL Pregame at the State Fair.

They also lined up for photos of the Stanley Cup because, after all, it was a hockey game.

Inside the stadium, square dancers, jugglers, sword swallowers, bull riders and even a live Texas longhorn entertained during breaks in the game and intermissions because it's Texas and why not. Cotton Bowl Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Ricky Williams dropped the ceremonial puck.

But the greatest accoutrement to this spectacle of hockey in Texas, and it truly was proof that hockey is alive and thriving in the Lone Star State, were the piglet races, with each piglet taking the namesake of an NHL player.

The winner: Ro-HAM Josi, named in honor of Predators captain Roman Josi.

And when it was over, the handshake line, customary at the end of every Stanley Cup Playoff series and now after all Winter Classic games too, the Stars lined up for an impromptu team picture, with goalie Anton Khudobin sliding in from the side.

"Top that," Seguin said.

The NHL will certainly try to next year at Target Field in Minneapolis. I can't wait.