For those of you who consume All-Star weekend as the league would have you (uncritically, with all the vapid non-demands of substance characteristic of reality television viewers), remind me why my ignoring it in its entirety is a shortcoming? What is it exactly I’m missing?
I’m not opposed to games of shinny; indeed, I rather love them. So if it’s shinny to be played, do it in touques out on a pond and call it what it is. Indeed, insomuch as it is the outdoor version of NHL hockey that has caught the nation’s attention the past two years, to the extent that there is even a need for an “All Star Game,” and as it really isn’t hockey that’s played during it, it too should be moved to its natural environs.
In baseball’s All-Star game, the pitchers still throw curveballs and attempt to strike out batters; hitters still run the basepaths with speed and desire; outfielders are willing to crash into walls in pursuit of deep fly balls. The NFL’s Pro Bowl, which has perhaps less meaning than any of pro sports’ glitz games, still features tackling and coordinated strategy. The NBA’s glamour game is perhaps closest to the NHL’s in fraud: defense is actually outlawed for the exhibition. The nature of hockey includes grit, confrontation, and contact, none of which are ever found in the All Star game. As such, it’s not hockey.
No wonder Gary Bettman loves it so.
And no wonder the commissioner would greet word of two of the best players in hockey deciding to skip the game, and preserve their health for games that actually matter, with a suspension.
Don’t mistake the energy and enthusiasm in Montreal this weekend for affinity and affection for All-Star games. The league could take representative players from all 30 clubs, seat them at tables at center ice of Bell Centre for weekend-long bridge or hearts tournaments, and 40,000 Montrealers would stand outside in their underwear to try and glean glimpses of the bearded card players.
I can’t stand the on-ice profanity in place of actual hockey on this weekend. You cannot persuade me that it sells our sport. But the Bettman-bred faux and forced marketing associated with it is even more offensive. A mid-season pause for clever marketing perhaps is a good idea, although I’d suggest that the Winter Classic, in just two brief years, has already eclipsed what the league pursues with its All-Star game. By far.
Speaking of profanity, I accidentally caught 10 seconds of Bettman’s on Versus last night moments before the skills competition commenced. A young blonde singer I couldn’t identify sang with a band that appeared to include a Phantom of the Opera fiend, while ice-bimbos gyrated around her. Technically, this didn’t occur on the same sheet of ice Maurice Richard memorialized, but during those 10 agonizing seconds I was glad for the Rocket’s passing, to spare him such unsightliness.
The NHL’s All-Star game has degenerated so thoroughly that the individual skills exhibitions carry more far more interest and intrigue. I envy Greg Wyshynski’s immersion in Montreal this weekend for his access to Canada’s beer and that city’s gentlemen’s clubs, but little else, and puck daddy honed in on this dilemma:
“Face it: the skills competition
is more compelling, interesting and dramatic — if not nearly as
well-paced — than the all-star game. You know it, I know it and some
of the best players in hockey have known it since when they were young
fans instead of NHL superstars.”
Ritualized events necessarily endure evolutions in their meaning. Years back, when the landscape of televised sports was relatively confined, All-Star games, it could be argued, offered a refreshing alternative at the midpoints of their respective sports’ seasons. But today, understandably, tens of millions of Americans can’t be drawn into following a farce when conference college basketball (or college hockey, or even PGA Tour golf) is just a click away. On Gary Bettman’s watch the NHL All-Star game has evolved from meaningless to meaningless gaudy glam, and it’s a very poor-fitting suit on our sport.
Put succinctly, we don’t don’t do bling. Which is partly why so many of us love our sport the way we do. Hockey, too, is perhaps the most cohesive, non-individualized of team sports, involving even goalies in at least half the action. If Alexander Ovechkin ranks among the most compelling of personalities in hockey, he is ever the first the credit his teammates for his team’s success. This weekend, again, is one all who play hockey recognize this, but sadly the commissioner does not.
Reminder: we hired him from the NBA. This weekend, moreso than any other, that wretched legacy is what shines through.
17 Comments
I still cannot understand how you can call it the All Star game when not one Detroit player is there. How about the Most Stars game?
Ovechkin’s breakaway and Chara’s supershot are the two memorable moments.
I don’t think it’s fair to suspend a player just for missing the game. What’s that all about anyway maybe just maybe the league should see that the players have a problem with the All Stars Game and change it instead of hurting their chances in the regular season standing. It’s stupid and irritates me!
Its not really an all star game. It is a public relations gimmick that has no integrity when it comes having the best players there.
If a player were selected for the all star game which was really an all star game, it would be an honor.
This is not an honor, its being used for PR by the NHL staff. Is that in the CBA?
I’m not going to argue that the All-Star game is a great exhibition of thrilling hockey. It can’t be because hockey is a team game that does not easily lend itself to displays of individualism in a competitive setting. To be a good hockey team throughout the year, you must become a cohesive unit, good from one line to the next and dependant on teammates for your success. How are we to generate that in the 3 days leading to an All-Star game. I’m just saying it’s impossible to produce “pleasing” hockey to the discriminating fan in this fashion. My solution, enjoy it for what it is and not for what it isn’t. People complain about the present and look fondly on the past, but seriously was the 16-6 drubbing by the Wales in 1993 that great? Or would you prefer the 14-12 North American victory over the World team back in 2001? Sounds like a typical hockey score to me. Fact is, in ALL the major sports, the real enjoyment of the game ends at about age 10. After that you move away from the flashy lights et. al. of the All-Star weekend and toward the gritty, truly enjoyable hockey of rivalry games, the stretch run and the playoffs. Just let it be a silly, flashy, corporate, glitzy oddball break in the middle of the season and get ready for the second half.
All-Star games are just marketing for the league. If anything, the ASG needs to be a celebration of the sport, and a way to market the personalities. They were able to do that at the SuperSkills game, (honestly, if you didn’t enjoy Ovie’s hat antics or Chara’s shot then you have no soul) but the actual ASG is the premier event. The fact that it is missing so many top players takes away from it, the fan voting takes away from it and the negativity surrounding the event and the suspension of players hurts even more. Perhaps there needs to be a different format, or maybe the GM’s need to pick the team, but at this point, the SuperSkills is more fun than the actual game.
The Skills Competition was always the more fun to watch. I find it all boring now. I never really watched the game because it to was boring to me.
That pre-competition “show” was horrible. That was enough to drive me away from watching last night seriously. I always liked the Old Stars game they used to have. Now they don’t do any of that and by doing that, I think they have dropped the history of the game. After all, it is an exhibition and not to revel in old great players is shunning the past in my mind. I am sure most of us would like to see these guys (Gretzky, Messier (sp?), etc…) playing around out there.
Discovered this blog a while ago and really like it, but every once in a while there is something incredibly obnoxious posted. There’s this weird undercurrent of elitism here, which is kind of odd considering it’s a sports blog. That’s cool if your love for hockey is too pure to condone the ASG, but before you start throwing insults around for people who might tune. in take a breath – it’s just a silly ASG. I promise it’ll be OK and nobody will remember it.
The show could have been worse, it could have been puckbunnies doing the Dance of the Seven Veils on skates.
There, now that I’ve broken your brain
I look at it as entertainment. Hockey? Not really, as you say. Is entertainment such an evil?
Do I think that Datsyuk and Lidstrom should have been suspended for skipping out? No. That’s their right, and their absence should serve as a message to the NHL. Obviously, it didn’t.
But if the players like it, and the fans like it, and the media like it, why not? I still like the Winter Classic better, but it’s not that bad.
I’m trying to figure out who got insulted here besides Bettman. And if the ex-NBA chief got criticized, he’s a big boy whose heavy hand this festive weekend deserves some flak— suspending Lidstrom?!! Otherwise I don’t think our resident “elitist” threw any insults around at all. Drop by again, though.
My only question about this is why be such a damn grouch about it? We all know what it’s going to be, so just watch it and shut up or ignore it completely. Cripes!
Most likely ’cause the All-Star Game is supposed to market the game, and it does the exact opposite.
I guess you’re happy with a piss-poor excuse of the game being presented for a national viewing audience. Many bloggers and MSM have criticized the All-Star Game and the farce that it’s voting process has become, and some have suggested deleting the All-Star Game entirely since the Winter Classic has the job much better. In fact, the NHL actually considered doing that a couple of years ago.
The All-Star Game used to have its fun elements, but that was about a decade or so ago. Time for things to change, but change doesn’t happen unless you actually point out something’s wrong in the first place. On Frozen Blog is the only place that’s “grouchy.”
I get that it’s NOT a real game, that’s why it doesn’t bother me. The only one that is a bit “real” is baseball (because the winner gets home field in the Series), but I wouldn’t make that kind of a change for this one. I’m fine with it as a time for the players to relax and have fun and the fans who are lucky enough to be there to bask in the glow. Yeah, Ovie got shafted in the voting, so that’s one thing that needs to be fixed. I guess they could just drop the game and maybe there’d be less grouching on one side, but certainly more on the other side.
Out of the moughts of babes. Our 10 year hockey player son stated what we have all thought: Gary Bettman should be suspended. ‘Nuff said. Skills competition was fun to watch, ASG was a joke. Again from the 10 year old: don’t they play defense? The only thing that might have slightly resembled any sort of puck protection defense was in the waning moments of the OT, when it looked as if a shootout would occur. I agree with our author – let’s put this thing out on a pond and let them play shinny. It is a slap in the face that there were no Red Wings to be seen anywhere and then to get a suspension on top of that. In the NFL ProBowl, the players opt out all the time and have no repercussions for doing so. Let’s not have our great sport be relegated to a circus sideshow by this format. Find something else.
“War” upside-down violinists!!! BWAHAHA!!!
This gimic of a “marketing opportunity” (was it ALWAYS looked on as such?!) would only serve to drive away potential pucks fans in my opinion. Bettman proves once again that once his hands are on something, it usually turns into mindless, American-ized fast-food TV for the Lobotomized. Bring back the Old Stars game, keep the Skills Competition (the REAL star of the weekend given the individual-ness of the weekend gathering), and let Dale Hunter referee the 3rd period/OT. Not quite “pure” hockey, but better than Bettman’s version. We can ask for it to be a better product, we’re the consumers!
Please make Bettman resign before he destroys hockey’s credibility entirely!
I love the skills competition – it’s fun and lighthearted. Personally, I wish they incorporated games, gimmicks, & skills into it. I like the idea of bringing back the “old stars game” or having a celebrity/old stars game (I think they had this once…kind of like the old rock & jock softball). I also think they should change the breakaway challenge into a game of HORSE (is that too gary bettman-ish for you???). The accuracy shooting is getting boring – almost everyone hits 3 or 4 targets. They should do it like the shootout challenge – have everyone go, anyone who hits 4 targets moves to the next round. Then they move it back a foot or something. keep going until there’s no one left.
As for the actual “Game”, I didn’t really see the all star game, but I don’t think it’s all that bad. You’re right – it’s not hockey as we know it, it is more like glorified shinny.
I would hate to see the skills competition go – and I don’t think it’s really enough to fill a weekend by itself. I also don’t think players should be penalized for not attending – I think the fans can judge those players for their own (either you care or you don’t). As for how to deal with it in the future, maybe the league merges the skills competition with the winter classic. I don’t know. I just can’t see the benefit for the league of actually scrapping the ASG. The ASG may be boring on TV, but I bet the whole environment is fun in person. I don’t see how it drives away people from hockey either – if you don’t like it, don’t watch it. That shouldn’t affect your love of hockey as it’s meant to be played.
I flashed back to the 1996 contest in Boston. In my opinion, that was THE BEST All-Star Game in history. Look at all the talent on both sides, and they CARED enough to play it like a real game which came down to the final seconds.
I must have no soul, because what Ovechkin did in the breakaway event went way beyond entertainment. It looked…like a clown in a circus rather than a hockey player having fun. Trouble is, Bettman’s too stupid to put reins on that sort of thing so I expect worse antics the next go-around.
Nonetheless, given the choice between a joke of an All-Star game and sending players to the Olympics to get busted up and put the league on hold for 3 weeks, I’ll choose the former.
I think the most insanely ridiculous elements of the whole thing are:
A) Suspending players who don’t show up without “legitimate reasons.” Bettman sounds like a petty truant officer or Ed Rooney from Ferris Bueller with that crap.
B) Fan voting. This year more than any exposed the NHL as no better than the Cincinnatis, New Yorks and St. Louises of MLB with the ballot stuffing.
I’m all for a revisionist stance where the two head coaches from the previous year’s Finals get the nod behind the bench and can pick their own favorites along with commissioners’ selections.
Post a Comment