NHL All-Star Game: Why it still matters
With a long, grinding season, the NHL doesn't allow players or fans many opportunities to not take everything so seriously, save for one weekend.
The NHL All-Star Game is ridiculous. There's nothing competitive about it aside from the fact that they keep score. The players go at about three-quarter speed, they dare not hit and defense is most definitely optional. And I love it.
Hockey is supposed to be a serious game played by serious men with serious stakes. But it's still a game. There's only one time a year the players can treat it as such. That's what Sunday's All-Star Game is all about and why it doesn't look like the hockey we have come to expect from the NHL.
After a two-year absence due to the lockout and the Olympics, the NHL has an opportunity to showcase a growing base of stars and some exciting young players we will surely see in this event for years to come.
In an increasingly cynical world, events like the NHL All-Star Game may appear passé, but I would argue that it's more necessary than ever before. Too often sports consumption is overly competitive, with social media serving as an echo chamber of vitriol and an utter lack of perspective.
That's what makes one day where the game doesn't count so valuable. The players get a break from the high level of competitiveness from regular-season hockey. The fans get a break from being at each other's throats or lamenting their team's position in the standings or dreaming of Connor McDavid or worrying about the trade deadline. One can enjoy the game without any rooting interest and let the stars be stars. That is, unless there are any long-suffering Team Nick Foligno or Team Jonathan Toews superfans out there.
This particular All-Star Weekend has been awfully fun so far, with the All-Star Fantasy Draft and Skills Competition providing legitimate entertainment value and a vehicle for the players' personalities to shine. Because the game doesn't matter, the players can let their guard down just enough to show that they're more than cliché-spewing hockey robots.
Who didn't love Toews' one-liners at the draft, or Brian Elliott's selfie-taking at the Skills? Sunday will provide more opportunities with mic'd-up players, dream line combinations, GoPro camera angles, guys who try things they wouldn't in a normal game and maybe a few things we'll remember for years to come (like Owen Nolan's called shot on Dominik Hasek, complete with FoxTrax).
Unfortunately, this year's event will be missing some of the league's key players who would have been a lot of fun to see in an All-Star situation. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin both had to pull out due to injury, while P.K. Subban -- one of the most fun personalities in the game -- didn't get an invite. But even without them, there's plenty to look forward to.
We could conceivably see a line with Steven Stamkos, Alex Ovechkin and Phil Kessel, three of the league's best pure shooters, at some point. The former Nashville Predators superstar defensive pairing of Shea Weber and Ryan Suter is expected to be reunited. Johnny Gaudreau and Patrick Kane, arguably two of the best stickhandlers in the game, will have a lot more time and space to do some crazy things with the puck. The Philadelphia Flyers' high-scoring duo of Jakub Voracek and Claude Giroux could go head-to-head for a few shifts while on different teams.
The NHL All-Star Game really isn't a game at all. It is a couple of hours of hockey-related distraction in the middle of a long, grinding season that wears on players physically and frays the senses of fans far and wide.
Most of all, Sunday is an opportunity to not care who wins, to enjoy the players for what they do and who they are and to allow this serious game played by serious men to not be so serious for once.
