The Mirabito Outdoor Classic in Syracuse on Saturday, Feb. 20 between the Binghamton Senators and Syracuse Crunch scored a hat trick in the record books of the American Hockey League and the New York State Fairgrounds.

The game earned marks for being the AHL’s first outdoor game in the league’s 74-year history and the Fairgrounds’ first winter outdoor professional sporting event, drawing an AHL-record crowd of 21,508.

Fans began trickling into the snow-covered Fairgrounds at 8:30 a.m. for the afternoon matchup, in which the Crunch beat the B-Sens 2-1. The snow, accompanied by 30-degree temperatures and wind gusts, served as an informal surface for pick-up games of hockey by tailgaters and snowball-fight ammunition for others.

Before the ceremonial puck drop, delivered by a skydiver who landed mere feet from a small mat on center ice, fans were treated to a performance of the national anthem by country singer-songwriter Jesse James and an F-16 jet flyover.

The action opened 1:50 into the first period when longtime rival enforcers Jeremy Yablonski and Syracuse’s Jon Mirasty squared off at center ice and frantically exchanged punches for nearly a minute.

“Our first shift me and Mirasty both bumped into each other and looked at each other and wanted to get our teams going,” Yablonski said. “I think [the fight] did — both teams played pretty hard and consistent all night.”

However, Syracuse struck first on the scoreboard after forward Alexandre Picard placed a wrist shot underneath Binghamton goaltender Mike Brodeur.

The B-Sens answered back early in the second period with a shorthanded goal by forward Josh Hennessy. Prior to the goal, Binghamton forward Martin St. Pierre managed to retain a rebound from a shot on Syracuse goaltender Kevin Lalande before he made a backhand pass to Hennessy, who tapped it into the empty side of the net.

But before the period was over, Syracuse once again took the lead on an odd-man rush from a wrist-shot goal by forward David Liffiton, who redeemed himself after taking a cross-checking penalty minutes earlier.

“I was involved in it. We had too long of a shift in the power play and we had a bad change, and we kind of hung our defense out to dry with an odd-man rush,” Hennessy said. “Things like that can’t happen … you can’t give teams chances like that.”

The B-Sens had a series of power play chances in the third period to tie the game up, including one in the final few minutes, but fell short.

“We created enough chances to tie the game, surely at the end,” Binghamton head coach Don Nachbaur said, citing a flurry of shots late in the period. “We just failed to hit the net.”

The loss closed out a stretch of six games in eight days for the B-Sens, where the team went 1-4-1. Since the outdoor game, Binghamton has gone 0-2-2, and are now 12 points out of the nearest playoff spot in the AHL’s East Division. They are also in last place in the 29-team league.

Although the game did not turn out as planned for the B-Sens, the experience was unforgettable.

“I think it was a great atmosphere,” Yablonski said. “This is actually one of the games that I’ve come out to and actually had some butterflies in my stomach with 20,000 people here at the first AHL hockey outdoor game. It was a good experience.”

Yablonski, who has previous experience playing outdoors in his hometown of Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, felt the pace of the game kept the players from thinking about the cold weather.

The game’s outdoor rink, built by Texas-based Ice Rink Events, took the team some time to get used to in the first period, according to Nachbaur.

“We saw a lot of bouncy pucks — I think we tried to play more of a fancy game at the start, but as the game wore on it was more simplified and we capitalized on some of those mistakes through the bouncing pucks,” he said.

Binghamton’s fan base, thousands of which made the trek to Syracuse, competed with Crunch fans throughout the game to see who was louder.

“After we scored we heard the Binghamton fans get up and cheer ‘Let’s go bingo,’” said forward Erik Condra. “We didn’t realize [the fan support] when we first got out there but once the stands were full it was huge.”

New York Sen. Charles Schumer, who attended the game along with Gov. David Paterson, said the day’s events helped boost Syracuse’s economy.

“According to the convention and visitors bureau, the stores and hotels were full, so it was an economic shot in the arm we wanted,” he said. “But most of all it brought real history and excitement to Central New York.”

As for another outdoor hockey game, Crunch owner Howard Dolgan thought it was a possibility.

“When people believe in it and support it, and the support we got politically, corporately and most importantly from the fans — it proved today that this is a hockey town,” he said.