Not a true example of the game? Hockey started outdoors. Halifax, Montreal 1875. Kids, youth leagues, high schools, even some smaller colleges played most of their games outdoors well into the second half of the last century. The Olympics (check out the photos of 1960 in Squaw Valley, CA; Italy in 1956, etc.) and other international competitions played outdoors into the early '60s. It's an outdoor sport. I just returned from a weekend tournament where my nephews got to play an outdoor game on a rink along the Mississippi River - what a great experience for them that I'm glad they got to experience as a memory of how the game started and was played for a century - and still is played in a lot of places.
The NHL players love these games that take them back to their roots learning and playing hockey, and back to the roots of the game, even if the ice isn't perfect. Lets not forget where this game started - on local ponds and rinks, not in shiny, money-absorbing arenas. I took nephews to the outdoor North Stars-Blackhawks alumni game here a couple years ago, and one of them was just saying yesterday how as a cold-winter city, we should get another game, and I hope we do. Problem is, the NHL wants to put almost all of these games in the same half-dozen favored markets every year, and I think that's what people are really getting fed up with. At least with the Heritage Classic games in Canada, they distribute the games around the country pretty fairly. The haven't done that in the U.S.