I’m still a sucker for outdoor hockey.

I realized it this past weekend, sitting in the press box calling play-by-play for the first weekend of the 2017 Frozen Fenway. I’ll be there again as the UMaine Black Bears take on UConn at 4 p.m. Saturday and New Hampshire plays Northeastern at 7:30 p.m.

There are plenty of reasons not to like these outdoor games. The ice is at the mercy of unpredictable weather conditions and is rarely as good as the ice you’ll find in a modern indoor rink. The lighting changes over time, as we saw Sunday during the UMass–Boston University game, which began with the ice surface mostly basking in sunlight and finished with the Fenway lights shining bright.

These are not ideal conditions for conference games that could dictate a team’s position in the Hockey East standings. That’s especially important for a team like the Black Bears, who have yet to win outside of Maine this season. Despite their 1-6-1 record in conference games, they are only three points out of hosting a first-round Hockey East series.

Still, I can’t help but get excited over watching games played at iconic outdoor venues like Fenway Park.

Admittedly, outdoor games aren’t quite the spectacle they used to be. The NHL has overexposed these events, hosting multiple “classics” every winter. This year the Winter Classic in St. Louis came just a few hours after the Centennial Classic in Toronto. There will be another in Pittsburgh at the end of February – and it will be the 14th time the NHL has staged an outdoor game since 2014.

The American Hockey League has followed suit. It played an outdoor game in the pouring rain in Bakersfield, California, over the weekend. Next year’s World Junior Championships will feature an outdoor game between the U.S. and Canada in Buffalo, New York.

It only makes sense that the college game has joined the party. In recent years there have been Division I outdoor games in Denver, Chicago and Toledo, Ohio. It’s the fourth time there have been college games at Fenway, and the crowds have dwindled since Boston College and BU played before sold-out crowds in the initial Frozen Fenway in 2010.

Don’t expect a huge crowd this Saturday when New Hampshire and Northeastern line up for the second game of the doubleheader, going head-to-head with the Patriots-Texans playoff game in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Having said that, there is still something special about these games. When teams take the ice for their first outdoor practice, it feels like the scene from “Hoosiers,” when Gene Hackman takes his team out onto the court for the team’s practice before the championship game in Indianapolis. After the players look wide-eyed around the arena, he then reminds them that the dimensions, basket and backboard are no different from those on any other court.

There were plenty of wide eyes on the ice at Fenway last Friday when players took the ice for practice. There will be plenty more this weekend.

That feeling will spread into the stands as well. UMaine fans will try to figure out if Black Bears goalie Rob McGovern is in fair territory when he makes a save. Social media will be flooded with images of slap shots being taken with the Green Monster lurking in the background.

Those images will serve as a reminder that this as an event worth remembering, and that outdoor hockey is a tradition worth continuing, even if these outdoor games aren’t as rare as when the NHL’s Winter Classic was begun in 2008.

Tom Caron is a studio host for the Red Sox broadcast on NESN. His column appears in the Portland Press Herald on Tuesdays.

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