Brandon's Take: The All-Star Game Has Been Handled Almost Perfectly By The NHL

You know what would be better?

All of us sign up to vote for the All-Star game… how about 2 of the voters are randomly drawn and those 2 become the Captains for each team. Then they make their picks for the game. You want to make people watch… Imagine having the opportunity to take the stage and draft a team? How about all the discussion on who drafted a better team and why…

Get rid of the Hometown Bias… Get rid of the Teammate Bias… Let the fans really pick the teams…

I like the idea of the captains. One should be from the team hosting the event so that there’s significant home-crowd involvement, and the other from the current Stanley Cup Champion works for me.

The starter voting and ballot-stuffing sucks because it keeps legitimate players who have earned it out of the game. It’s nice to have fan involvement, but maybe they should do something where a team’s standing gives them a certain # of positions on the draftable roster. So if we get 3 spots, then we’d get to vote on the 3 players we want to send. Teams at the bottom get to send 1 player. Obviously some fuddling would have to take place so that there’s the correct # of positions represented (6 goalies, 12 D, 24 forwards, or whatever the All-Star rosters are). Would at least keep them from voting in an entire group from 1 team (Canadian teams cough) as ‘starters’.

League should scrap the game… have a skills competition followed by the winter classic… League has the skill competition int he WC hosting City on the Friday Night Skills Competition, Saturday Night Alumni Game, Sunday WC game…

They are all a waste of time. Give everyone the weekend off.

They are non-competitive games that barely qualify as sport. More like controlled entertainment. The play is more like practice scrimmaging than anything else.

The games resembles neither of the highest forms its played at (NHL Playoffs and Olympics). The whole thing is a money making gambit that has no redeaming value.

If you want to make it interesting, put up $25 million to the winning team. Then maybe these shit bag players will show some balls and back check. Eliminate fan voting. Most fans are ignorant assholes that just vote for their home team players because they dont know anything about the game or other teams. Most of them think Corsi and Fenwick are an ambulance chasing law firm they see commercials for in between feeding sessions of fast food and episodes of Storage Wars.

I say screw the All Star Game and sterilize those that support it.

some kind of thing with, say, a mascot, or a guardian, if you will, for every team….almost like a super hero

and then at the all star game they’d unveil these ‘guardians’ in a big 3D CGI movie thing, tying the guardians to their teams

that would be the most epic idea ever….too bad the NHL isn’t smart enough to jump on board with something like that

It looks like players were picked fairly this time.

Eric Christensen Scores!!!!!!!!!! Oooopps, sorry, that was for the Whale.

http://www.hockeyprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1232