All Star Weekend ended up being a smashing success. At least that's what the media is saying.
My opinion? Definitely better than before, but still not great. However, in the context of the other major professional sports, the NHL is doing something right.
Frankly, I don't think they could have gotten any luckier than being pitted against this years Pro Bowl, one of the worst sports events I've ever seen in my entire life. And I watched a total of maybe 7 minutes of it.
And despite the nearly universal mockery, I feel like The Guardian Project has minimal downside, and large upside.
All together it was a good weekend for the NHL, but I know what you all are really wondering, was it a better weekend for The Legend or The Law?
Well the post today is going to include my All-Star Breakdown as well as a conclusion to The Legend and The Law do a mock draft.
NHL All-Star Skills Competition
Fastest Skater
They started off this year's skills competition with the fastest skater race and added two wrinkles to it, pitting defenseman skating backwards, and goalies skating against each other.
The Legend's Take
If they really wanted to add a cool wrinkle to it, they need to do a relay race. The classic mano-a-mano race is normally pretty good, but the D skating backwards was just goofy. Next year they should add a 3 man relay race. They could even keep the goalies or the backwards skating as a part of that
The Legend and The Law Results
Kris Letang beat Duncan Keith in the backwards contest and Cam Ward beat Tim Thomas in the goalie race, though conspiracy theorists speculate he may have taken a dive for the hometown guy, giving me two points.
Unfortunately, St. Louis beat Ryan Kesler and Mike Green is fatter than...well...someone really fat, and he got destroyed by Steven Stamkos.
The rookies ended up being the highlight of the race, which didn't mean much to us.
The Legend - 2
The Law - 2
Breakaway Challenge
Now I've started to here some grumblings about this event. And read one article that said it needs to be scrapped because the players obviously look outside of their comfort zone. My response to that is simple...PFFFTTTT.
Frankly the only problem I have with the event is the embarrassment I feel for the weak moves the players attempt. You can search youtube and find hundreds of moves better than what they tried, and many of them done by kids under the age of 12.
I mean there's a video on there by Stamkos, from 2008!, where he talks about some of the moves that might be attempted in the competition that year, some of which were still better than what they did.
The Legend's Take
2 things need to be amended about the Breakaway contest.
First, they need to find a way to make the goalies try, without trying too hard. When the goalies don’t care a lot of great shootout moves, like the Forsberg move, end up completely ineffective. But obviously if they are going full boar, they may interrupt a move in progress.
I think the best way to do it would be to bring in a celebrity goalie for the competition, or a retired player if the host franchise has someone appropriate that fits the bill. I don't think the amateur goalies they had two years ago worked, but a celebrity would be perfect both from a promotions stand point and because they would be the perfect mix of effort vs inability.
And second, they need to bring in 2 amateur players, 1 for each team. Hold a contest on youtube where the winner gets to participate. If 13 year-olds are making better shoot-out moves than the pros, then why not pit them against them. I guarantee it would be a huge hit.
The Legend and The Law Results
Ovechkin won but didn’t deserve it. The best was Corey Perry, but he finished near the end. Voting for this competition sucked.
Oh well, it was an easy 8 points for me.
The Legend – 10
The Law - 2
Shooting Accuracy
A confused Dustin Byfuglien did not realize the targets
were sponsored by McDonald's not made by them
This was actually one of the highlight events for me. I liked the twist of making it a race, though it diminished the classic 4-4 milestone, and the best moment of the weekend was the do-over.
For those that missed it teammates Jonathan Toews and Patrick Sharp were pitted against each other, but when the whistle blew Toews didn’t start shooting. In fact it wasn’t until Sharp was a couple targets in that Toews realized they had started. When Sharp polished him off, JT had the same look on his face that any one of us would have had in the situation, the “this sucks, this isn’t fair, this sucks” look.
Then the NHL stepped in and did the smartest thing they could have done. They decided on a do-over. Screw the rules, screw it’s his own fault, on the weekend they decided to have the schoolyard draft, they decided to play by schoolyard law. If something unfair happens, do it over. They proved they were all-in with this concept. Kudos.
This is one of the cooler events as the carnage that results from a hit is normally pretty cool and when a player gets on a role the crowd always lets out a collective “wow” sigh. There’s only two ways to improve the event.
1. Bring back the camera in the targets. I’m not sure why they didn’t have it this year, but it’s always cool seeing the puck come at you on TV and destroying expensive equipment. Plus with 3D TV’s becoming popular can you imagine what that would look like?
2. Would involve completely blowing up the competition, which I don’t think is necessary. But if they wanted to revamp it for some reason I would change it to a shooting gallery of sorts (think a sharpshooter shooting bottles of a fence post). Instead of the four corners of the net, they could line up targets, or water bottles on the crossbar or along the boards. This might work better as an add-on to the Skill Challenge Relay, but I think it would be exciting to watch a player mowing down targets like that.
The Legend and The Law Results
Kesler beat Richards, Nash beat Kessel and Daniel Sedin beat Havlat (should have been Sedin vs Sedin).
Meanwhile, Toews beat Sharp in the redo and Kane beat E. Staal.
In the finals D. Sedin helped me pull away by destroying Kane. Chalk another one up for The Legend.
The Legend – 15
The Law – 4
Skills Challenge Relay
Not a bad debut for this event, we’ve seen much worse over the years. The highlight was Toews blowing through the targets to close out his groups run. That and Kris Letang hitting the net with about 10 one-timers, but unable to get them above the barrier (a shock for any of us that have watched him miss high and outside for 3 years). For those that know hockey it was kind of funny watching a defenseman shoot absolutely textbook shots from the point, that were actually hurting him in the contest.
The Legend's Take
The biggest problem with this contest is that in a race, people want to see people racing. Time vs. time is only dramatic when you have clocks ticking down. That would be an interesting twist next year. Have the first group set the standard, and then have the best time running down on the scoreboard for subsequent runs. It might actually be fun watching guys peeking at the clock, or pressing themselves in their individual skills because they know they’re behind
Also, when you’re doing a multiple dimensional competition like the one they did you need to move from station to station quicker. For instance have the first guy do the one timers, then have the guy skate through pylons, towards the next station, then do passing, then have a guy stickhandle to the next part, etc. Having the one timers take almost a minute to complete really dragged.
It’s really an easy fix though. Cut each station in half and do them all twice, same competition but it would be much more intense.
The Legend and The Law Results
I couldn’t figure out a way to split up the points here since every group included rookies and players that were incorrectly drafted by us, so I just chalked up the points won to each of us. Team Lidstrom won the event 5-3, so The Law finally started chipping into my lead.
The Legend – 18
The Law – 9
Hardest Shot
No joke here, I just really wish when his stick broke
it would have snapped up and hit him in the eye.
The hardest shot competition, though not my favorite, is clearly one of the best. The energy in the building when Chara broke his record was palpable, and the showdown between him and Weber was probably one of the better moments of the night.
The Legend's Take The only thing I would want to do to this one is make it a little more exciting outside of the top 2 players. I mean Byfuglien’s shots were awesome, and no one cared because Chara and Weber had already destroyed his numbers.
I think the solution is to break it down into 3 groups, with 4 shooters in each group: the lightweights, middleweights and heavyweights. And you could have the winner from each group, plus a wild card face off in the finals.
How you divide up the groups I’m not certain. But you could build anticipation better this way. Start with the rookies maybe, then you’re snipers who all shoot mid to high nineties, then the defensemen probably, who tend to have the hardest shots.
The Legend and The Law Results
This was a bad event for us. As 3 of the 6 winners, Sharp, Byfuglien and Weber, were on the other guys team, thus disqualified.
The Law had Burns and Stamkos notch points for him, and I avoided the shut-out with Chara’s come from behind victory in the Finals.
The Legend – 20
The Law – 11
Elimination Shoot-out
I think the NHL saw this going better when they decided to implement it this year. I thought the elimination shootout was effective, except of course not enough players scored. I’m not quite sure if there is a fix for that though.
I remember back in the day watching Mario score 3 or 4 times on a goalie during the skills competition. I just think the goalies have gotten too good these days.
The Legend's Take I think one change that needs to be made, is you should make sure players face a different goalie in each round. Subban shooting on Fleury twice was just stupid.
One interesting way they could switch this up is have each guy get 3 pucks. And they have to take 3 back-to-back-to-back breakaways on all 3 goalies. Then like the home-run derby they eliminate the field by half or a third or whatever, and do that every round.
I’ll admit that’s not a great idea, but I feel like the event was very anti-climatic because nobody scored, and this is the only way I could think to switch it up.
The Legend and The Law Results
This was The Law’s last chance for a big come back. The 1st round was very even with 6 guys on each team scoring. Unfortunately, 3 of my goals were ineligible (Subban, Couture, and Karlsson) and only 2 of his were (Buff and Shattenkirk).
In the 2nd round only Perry and St. Louis scored. 2 points for each of us.
The Law entered the 3rd round of the shootout down by 8 points. 3 goals by St. Louis and non by Perry would pull out a victory. But alas it was not in the cards. Perry scores and Marty does not. Game.
Skills Competition Results
The Legend – 28
The Law – 17
Draft Results
The Legend - 15
The Law - 11
Weekend Total
The Legend - 43
The Law - 28
As you can tell The Law was behind going into the All-Star Game, but considering how everyone was calling for a Lidstrom blowout, and I weighted the game on Sunday heavier than the previous two days, he certainly had a chance for a come-back. Let's see the results.
THE LEGEND AND THE LAW DO A MOCK DRAFT RESULTS
Long story short I ended up giving 2 points for goals, 1 point for assists, and scored only the players we correctly drafted on Friday. Which means Shea Weber's 4 assists for Lidstrom's team went unaccounted for.
I also gave The Law 5 bonus points for Patrick Sharp being the MVP, despite being on Team Staal. It just felt right considering how early he drafted him. Touche.
The Legend's team ended up scoring 8 goals and 14 assists for a total of 30 points. Which gave them a total on the weekend of 73 points.
With the 5 bonus points for MVP The Law had 40 points to make up on Sunday. He managed to score 9 goals but only had 13 assists for a total of 31 points. Narrowly losing to The Legend by the final score 73-64.
Eat it.
It was a fun weekend. The NHL had some success with their new format, and I kicked The Law's ass at a hockey related game. A good time was had by all.
Now let's play some real hockey.
