All-star games have been terrible for years. I don’t care what sport it is. None of the participants care, since there is really nothing to play for (don’t bother bringing up how the winner of the MLB All-Star Game gets home-field advantage in the World Series. I have a hard time believing that the lone all-star representative of the Pittsburgh Pirates gives a damn about the National League having home-field). Believe it or not, NASCAR has the only all-star event that has anything on the line ($1 million), but sadly the sport is NASCAR so very few people care. The NHL today made an announcement that will hopefully turn this trend around.
The players that are chosen to be all-stars will elect four captains, with the four being split into groups of two. They will then take turns choosing players to fill out their roster. The teams will not be limited to one side being the eastern conference and the other the western conference. This is true playground style roster building in the purest sense. Each team has to have a specific number of forwards, defenseman, and goalies, but the captains can fill out the roster in any order they want.
I’m not sure if I can use enough superlatives to describe how awesome this idea is. What would be better than Sidney Crosby’s team versus Alexander Ovechkin’s team? I know those guys would care about that game. Not to mention all the pressure on the guys that are picked first. I would like to know what the guys who get picked last would be thinking also (I believe they’ll have a chip on their shoulder). Killing the notion that the East needs to play the West is the most brilliant aspect of this. This opens up the possibilities of having players from the same team split, which always spices things up. All this game needs is a frozen pond in the middle of the Canadien woods, and we'll have ourselves some spectacular television.
I’m not sure if this will create a ratings win for the NHL, but the fact that they are thinking outside of the box is encouraging. The league hit rock bottom during the lockout that wiped out the 2004-05 season, and fortunately for their sake they have been aggressive in rebuilding their fan base. Hockey currently has a salary cap system that is the envy of the NBA (it’s been widely reported that the NBA hopes to adopt a hard salary cap that is very similar to what the NHL has put in place). If they can just move one or two of the southern US teams back up into Canada, where people actually care about hockey, then the NHL will really be in business. What makes more sense to you, having a team in Quebec or a team in Phoenix?
The NHL is slowly on its way back to its pre-lockout form. The New Year’s Day Winter Classic has been a hit for three years running, more than holding it’s own against college football bowl games. Last winter’s Olympics tournament created the most buzz that hockey has had since Mark Messier led the Rangers to a Stanley Cup in 1994. I hope the playground-style roster building becomes a trend (imagine Lebron vs. Kobe in the NBA All-Star Game choosing their own teams. Yikes.) As long as the NHL All-Star Game isn’t hidden on Versus, I’ll make a point to watch.
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