All-Star Game News & Notes
Josi Scores On Breakaways, Takes In Best of Skills Competition | NHL.com
They should have let him participate in something.
NHL All-Star Skills Takeaways: ‘Bieber’ steals show, McDavid loses crown | Sportsnet.ca
Absolutely nothing to do with Bieber in any way stole the show, if you were wondering. Tomas Hertl’s performance was whatever; Jordan Binnington’s only pleased the home fans. The rest does have some highlights, though.
NHL All-Stars enjoy ‘really hard’ and ‘unique’ Shooting Stars event | ProHockeyTalk | NBC Sports
Making everyone end the night with an event where nobody could figure out the rules or knew how it went and we had to watch Patrick Kane win something was a huge mistake.
Anyway, on to better and fun things:
Canada beats U.S. in 3-on-3 women’s game at NHL All-Star Weekend | Sportsnet.ca
Congratulations to the NHL for coming up with something in addition to Hardest Shot to make the skills competition still worth tuning in for.
Speaking of…
Shea Weber reclaims NHL Hardest Shot title | ProHockeyTalk | NBC Sports
Nick described this last night as the annual contest to see who had the second-hardest shot after Shea Weber. As is often the case, the answer was…Shea Weber (okay, and also John Carlson).
Canada beats U.S. in Elite Women 3-on-3 | ProHockeyTalk | NBC Sports
Hilary Knight is a great interview.
Slavin wins Accuracy Shooting at All-Star Skills | NHL.com
Bizarre and delightful.
This article also contains probably the first time since the invention of writing that anyone has said “To be in St. Louis is perfect”, so that kicks the bizarre factor up a little.
Other News & Notes
5 things we learned from Gary Bettman’s State of the NHL address | Sportsnet.ca
This honestly almost sounds reasonable.
Fighting for more than status quo has always been part of women’s game | Eyes On The Prize
This reminds me of something Noora Raty said a few months ago, about how you have to actually get treated like a professional to count as one (I’m paraphrasing pretty broadly, but that was the sense of it). It sounds like some other, less outspoken people are now chiming in to agree.
Pageau, Kreider could fill key needs as NHL Trade Deadline approaches | NHL.com
At least the Predators don’t have anyone on this list yet.
‘I feel real good’: Oilers’ Connor McDavid opens up about injury recovery | Sportsnet.ca
I had no idea it was that risky an injury. Kind of underlines how silly it is that the NHL has so many meaningless games, to me.
PWHPA shines at 2020 ECHL All-Star Classic | The Ice Garden
The ECHL All-Star Classic sounds really fun. Also, the round-robin thing where you get to keep the goals you scored in previous rounds? Brilliant. If you’re going to make everyone play in circles anyway, why not?