After covering all weekend and mainly complaining through twitter about how bad the event was, I wanted to end the All-Star weekend with a recap and discuss some stuff.
Personalities
There were none. No Alexander Ovechkin, No Jakub Voracek amongst others, made for a pretty boring skills competition and a little more competitive All-Game. Marc-Andre Fleury and Braden Holtby tried to keep it light, but it seemed that for a lot of players (especially the first timers) they had something to prove. Brent Burns and Joe Pavelski brought their children but they kind of just sat on the ice and got autographs.
Matthews/Marleau
In what was one of the more entertaining events to happen at the Skills Competition, Toronto Maple Leafs Sniper Auston Matthews was up to participate in the accuracy event. He began to drop his stick and pulled off his jersey and underneath was a Patrick Marleau Leafs jersey, The building erupted. The jersey was very tight on Matthews, but he tried to shoot with it on seemingly not caring about winning. I’m posting the video below, along with a tweet from Patrick Marleau’s wife to add some entertainment value.
and my final thought.
Kendall Coyne Schofield/ Brianna Decker
I’ve seen a lot of rumbling on twitter and facebook, actually if I’m quite honest some pretty disturbing and disgusting comments. I’m not here to bring them up or call out names, I’m here just to add a perspective with some thoughts. First Schofield, her lap was one of the most fantastic things I’ve seen in sports history. Why you ask? Because she was fast, she has serious talent and her showing up at the NHL All-Star game was not a publicity stunt, it was about Women’s Hockey and the Women being recognized for just how damn good they are. Women are not trying to take over the NHL, this isn’t wrestling people. They want to be recognized for how good they are too. Now let’s talk Decker, Leon Draisaitl of the won the NHL Premier Passer with a time of 1.09 but Decker came close to his time with a 1.12 after reviewing of the footage of her run. But even when Decker apparently had beaten Draisaitl’s time she never asked to be crowned the champion, in fact, she never really said much. That’s because it’s not about stealing thunder from any of the NHL players, it’s about how good the Women are and how little recognition they get. This is the event that gets turned down by most of the participants because of it’s level of difficulty, Decker was merely doing it to show how it worked. Let me close with this and then I’ll leave videos and tweets below of these wonderful women’s work. If you are a hockey fan anywhere in the world, then you care about hockey in general and how the sport grows. These women’s skills should be recognized and leagues like the NHL should help it grow like they are doing now, they never asked for handouts, they have worked their butts off just like any NHL player to get where they are. The NHL partnering with Women’s Hockey makes me a very happy hockey fan, as it should for you. Because they’re growing the sport we love and recognizing fantastic athletes.
