The NHL all-star weekend has managed to develop into the best event of all when it comes to letting the stars shine bright. The combination of the skills competition and the exciting draft process which makes for completely different teams each year has propelled the sports all-star festivities above all else.
Oh yea and there's a third reason-The players actually play the game! The NHL all-star game is always coupled with the NFL's Pro Bowl and i'm not sure anyone can even consider that a game. The Pro Bowl is a friendly game of touch at best. Now of course there's a certain intensity and physicality that comes with playing in the NHL, but the players have a way better balance between not hitting a guy too hard but also not giving away goals and letting the other team score.
Also, i think we as fans get more entertainment out of a high scoring hockey game, because let's face it, many more goals get scored in an ASG then in any other hockey game. A soft game of football that usually turns into a shootout could be exciting to some, but that's more apt to happen in a real NFL game. The scores that get scored in the NHL game are a little something out of the ordinary. We aren't used to seeing hockey games that finish 11 to 9 or something like that.
Next-The skills competition and the fantasy all-star draft. The idea to have two captains draft an entire team of the games best and have them be all mixed up between conferences has been great. It's been a few years since they stopped doing east vs. west and they also had the World vs. North America, those were both cool and everything. But the idea of having different teams every year has the potential to be amazing. We saw that in this years game with things like Marion Gaborik scoring two first-period goals on his own teammate Henrik Lundqvist. It shows something that this game has that the other sports lack, competition. As teammates the two were competing fiercely to best the other. When Gaborik scored his first goal Henrik dropped down on the ice for a second as if to say "I can't believe i didn't stop him."
And with the implementation of the draft, the skills competition gets very interesting. The thing i love about the skills part of it, is that everyone participates. There are so many cool events, some individual and some team oriented, but the players are into it and the stuff they can do on the ice is amazing. If any league needs to think about changing their All-Star process, it should be the NBA and NFL. At least now in baseball the winner of the mid-summer classic gets home field advantage in the World Series,but NBA and NFL are just brutal. I would love to be able to get excited for the NBA ASG, because all of the best basketball players on one floor does seem potentially awesome, but again, nobody plays for real. At least defense, that's for sure. Nobody plays d. I guess it's nothing to get to hung up on, for the most part they mean nothing except for in the MLB. It's just is nice to know that one league has an at least tolerable game with competition to watch. As far as NBA goes, i'll be ready for the all-star squad in the Olympics and love every minute of watching our country dominate the world, but they can hold on to their all-star game-I'm good.
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