With Christmas in the rear-view mirror and New Year's Day just ahead, we can safely concentrate on — hockey?

Yes, hockey on New Year's Day. And not just any hockey game, an outdoor game.

The NHL will play its first outdoor game in the United States on Tuesday when the Buffalo Sabres play the Pittsburgh Penguins at Ralph Wilson Stadium, better known as the place where the Buffalo Bills play NFL football.

It should be a singular event, played before a rollicking house. All 73,000 seats were sold within just a few hours after being made available.

Hockey's not exactly thriving on TV these days. Since the NHL returned from its lockout, its nationally televised games have been mostly on the Versus cable network. Although its Nielsen ratings have gone up from 0.2 last season to 0.3 this season, just the fact I have to add the words "cable network" to the name of the channel should tell you it's not exactly a household word.

NBC's daytime weekend games scarcely register a blip on the radar either, so both the network and the NHL were happy to put together a gimmick game to launch NBC's 2008 coverage.

It should something to at least tune into at least to get a sense of the pageantry and uniqueness of the event. Pittsburgh's Sydney Crosby, of course, is the drawing card from a talent perspective, but even he, as good as he is, has seldom had to worry about which end of the ice the wind might be blowing toward.

The star of the show Tuesday could very easily wind up being the weather. NBC producer Sam Flood said a little weather would be nice to show, but anything like the Bills-Browns NFL game at Cleveland two weeks ago would be unwelcome.

"A light dusting, a little flurries on and off just to have that visual effect would be pretty spectacular," said Flood. "Not too much more than that."

Bob Costas will host the game, which in itself tells you NBC thinks it's a fairly special occasion. Costas has hosted Super Bowls, Kentucky Derbies, Olympic Games, even David Letterman's elevator races at 30 Rock when his show was on that network. So the question was obvious: Where does an NHL outdoor game rank in terms of uniqueness for him?

"It's pretty unique, there's no doubt about that," Costas said. "That's actually a misstatement: Something can't be pretty unique' or very unique.' It's either unique or it not. So it's unique.

" It's an unusual thing. I guess that's your point. Something you don't see every day, that's for sure."

Costas' hockey experience is not vast; he did do play-by-play for the minor league Syracuse Blazers in 1973-74 and occasionally filled in for the late Dan Kelly on St. Louis Blues games in the '70s and '80s on KMOX Radio. Still, being a hockey expert is not necessary for this gig and Costas jumped at the chance.

"I was asked and I immediately said yes," he said. "It took me about five seconds to say yes because it's within what I look at as my role at NBC. I think people are comfortable with the idea that if there is a big event on NBC that I might be the one to come on and set the stage and it implicitly says that NBC considers this to be something of significance, that it's not your everyday hockey game, and it isn't. They didn't have to twist my arm. I think it's cool.

"It really is an event. I don't think you have to be somebody who follows the NHL day in and day out to enjoy it as an event and that's the way I'll try to set it up."

If it's successful, perhaps outdoor NHL games will become a tradition on New Year's Day the way NBA games are on Christmas Day.

— Staff writer Jim Carlisle covers TV-Radio and also writes Tuesday columns for The Star. E-mail address: jcarlisle@VenturaCountyStar.com. For more, please see his blog at jimcarlislesports.blogspot.com.