RALEIGH, N.C. — Strip emotion, sharp-edged competitiveness and hitting from the sport, and hockey becomes . . . well, it becomes what will be on display this afternoon in the NHL All-Star Game at the RBC Center.
A show.
Avalanche centers Paul Stastny (Team Staal) and Matt Duchene (Team Lidstrom) will be on opposite squads in the Carolina Hurricanes’ home arena adjacent to the North Carolina State University campus, but if they find themselves on the ice at the same time, chances are they will have been more “competitive” against each other in Colorado training-camp scrimmages.
“It’ll be fine,” Duchene said. “We’ll still hang out quite a bit through this whole thing, but come game time, we’ll be in separate locker rooms.”
Said Stastny: “I was hoping we’d be on the same team and play together, but it’ll be fun.”
It sure won’t be serious.
The tipping point for the NHL All-Star Game — one that led to some traditionalists throwing up their hands and conceding the Zamboni was out of the garage — came in 2001 at the Pepsi Center, where the North American All-Stars (with Joe Sakic) squeezed out a 14-12 victory over the World All-Stars (with Peter Forsberg).
That remains the highest-scoring game in NHL all-star history, but it’s not as if the game has “tightened up” since. It’s firewagon hockey . . . minus extinguishers and hoses, so to speak.
By 2001, the trend toward turning All-Star Games into multiday carnivals was in full swing, as when the 1998 Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Coors Field was part of proceedings that included Ken Griffey Jr. winning the Home Run Derby.
It would continue at the 2005 NBA All-Star Game at the Pepsi Center, the climax of a weekend that also featured slam-dunk, 3-point shooting and skills contests.
And the Pro Bowl long has been the game players long to be selected for, since it is used as a measure of legitimacy (“five-time Pro Bowl choice”), but less thrilled about playing in.
Fantasy format creates buzz
In that context, gimmicks have become part of the all-star formulas, and the NHL took another step in that direction this weekend, with the “fantasy draft” format selection of the teams Friday night at the Raleigh Convention Center. The captains, honored with the team names, are Eric Staal of the Hurricanes and Nick Lidstrom of the Detroit Red Wings. The draft was attention-getting and unique, and while some of the “banter” seemed forced, it was at least good television — the first time.
“It does feel a bit different,” Lidstrom said. “You kind of have a chance to pick your own team and you have a chance to play with the players from the Eastern Conference.”
Innovation, though, has a way of becoming old awful fast in this age.
“It was fun, which is what it was intended to do,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Saturday, shortly before the SuperSkills competition at the RBC Center. “It was emblematic of what we expect for the weekend. . . . There is a buzz, there is a sense of energy around this All-Star Weekend.”
Bettman complimented Brendan Shanahan, a former winger who now is the NHL’s vice president for business development and came up with the choose-up-sides proposal and was part of making some tweaks in the SuperSkills competition. Bettman noted that the changes “helped make this fun for our players and fun for our fans.”
Said Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos: “I thought the draft was a great idea. I think that every hockey and football fantasy geek in the world was watching. It was the embodiment of all those fantasy league drafts and fantasy teams people put together.”
Don’t expect keen competition
The downtown Raleigh Street Fair and the FanFair at the Convention Center have been crowded and popular, and events such as those have become all-star fixtures in all sports.
But the game itself?
The inherent qualities of the sport still make MLB’s All-Star Game a reasonable facsimile of “real” baseball. The inherent qualities of the sports, when competition isn’t keen, make the Pro Bowl and the NHL All-Star Game more spectacle than competition. And the NBA All-Star Game is somewhere in the gray area.
But if anyone who tunes into the Pro Bowl or the NHL All-Star Game today and is disappointed by an atmosphere that’s more carnival than competitive, the question must be asked:
Well, what did you expect?
