ALL-STAR GAME a joke… UNLESS

The All-Star game — what a total waste of time it is UNLESS you have a player pool. Seriously folks… without having a pool of some kind this isn’t worth watching. We have a group who realized this many moons ago and turned it into a pizza eating beer drinking event by selecting player?s names out of a hat. Winner takes all for the last goal scored in the period. It started being the first goal and then we realized that the attention to the game went away within about two-minutes.

Not only should the NHL rethink this but someone should also rethink the skills events. How many times does it take for them to get a working clock on the fastest skater? Who can screw that up so many years in a row? Bands and music drowning out the crowd noise during player introductions – these folks have taken some technology and served it up like?warm vomit. It doesn’t come across to more than a few as digestible.

The “game” itself was really nothing but a sham. Defensemen not playing defense… goalies that should get hazardous duty pay… forwards (e.g. Malkin?s has great between the legs goal) doing trick shots at half speed… and more scoring than what took place at your Senior Prom. The scoring made for some leader changes in our pool and some good auctioning-off of some winning (at the time) tickets close to the end of the period but all-in-all this was still more about beer drinking, pizza eating, and generally BSing with friends than a game.

There’s got to be a better way and we tried to think of what would be more entertaining: Some ideas offered up were:

(a) Goon’s all star game, where only those with a good many PIM’s and low amount of TOI would qualify. You shouldn’t keep players like Avery from the game.

(b) Old timers, playing on studded tire scooters… heck, the defense look like they were playing with walkers. Why not.

(c) Instead of the young stars game how about the young stars verses the old stars… those retired from hockey. Yzerman, Hull, Lemieux, Roenick (whoops, he’s still playing), the Hunter Brothers, the Sutters, you get the basic idea.

(d) The skills should be open to the fastest players, hardest slap shop, etc… whether they are selected as an all star, or not. Maybe a how fast can you trash a hotel room be added for Hull, Roenick, and Chelios.

(e) Change the all star game to being the Winter Classic and award the teams in the winning conference with home ice advantage in the Stanley Cup Finals. If you think that doesn’t mean much check the results.

(f) If the present situation isn’t changed don’t suspend players who choose not to attend.

This is Dr Hook? carry on.