ALL-STAR ABERRATION
Draisaitl situation shows the system needs a fix: Jones
In two or three years, when the ice district is up and running, Edmonton will play host to the NHL All- Star Game.
Hopefully, they get it fixed by then.
The league lucked out Friday when the fans got it right in the Last Man In voting, choosing Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl to join Connor McDavid on the Pacific team for the three-on-three format mini-tournament.
Draisaitl, with the career year he’s having, should never have had to go through the indignity of this dog-and-pony show in the first place.
It would have been almost criminal if a fan base stuffed the ballot box to get their guy in the game ahead of more qualified candidates.
Draisaitl sits tied for 10th in league scoring with 54 points, on pace for a 100-point season.
He’s tied for third with the Calgary Flames’ Sean Monahan in Pacific Division point production behind only McDavid and Calgary’s Johnny Gaudreau.
But Draisaitl getting into the all-star game doesn’t take away from the fact that Monahan, who might be having the best season of them all, didn’t get picked to be in the game. Morgan Rielly in Toronto might be at the top of the list of defencemen with the year he’s having, and he isn’t going, either. Mitch Marner is the top scorer for the Leafs and he’s not an all-star either.
But Monahan totally, 100 per cent, deserves to be there. He now becomes one of the poster boys for what’s wrong with the game.
Before we go there, let’s deal with Draisaitl, who has 23 goals and a serious shot at 40 and maybe even 50.
If you’re going to feature threeon-three hockey, you shouldn’t have to go to a fan ballot to complete the most spectacular three-on-three overtime pairing in the league.
In this format, McDavid and Draisaitl should be an entry and, arguably, the first two players selected.
Since the start of the 2016-17 season, the dynamic duo is tied for first in NHL overtime points with 13 apiece.
They’re combining, along with teammate Ryan NugentHopkins, to carry the Edmonton Oilers on their backs, staying in playoff contention on a team with half a roster of expendable players.
Because three on three is the format they’ve chosen, the league’s top three-on-three combinations have to be part of it. Putting Budweiser Clydesdales out there with the thoroughbreds because all 31 teams have to have a representative doesn’t work.
The NHL finally discovered a playoff format worth watching with three-on-three hockey. But you can’t have it both ways.
The NHL has changed all-star game formats so many times it has become laughable.
In the beginning, the first official all-star game in 1947 featured the Stanley Cup champions versus the stars of the other five teams. Other formats to follow included first-team all-stars versus second-team all-stars, Eastern Conference versus Western Conference, North America versus The World and, most recently, the Fantasy Draft farce where all-star captains picked the players for each team like in a pickup game.
The 2016 all-star game brought in the current format, where an 11-man team from each of the four divisions competed in 20-minute, three-on-three games.
The winners of the first two games returned to play for a $1-million take-all in a 20-minute final. It works.
The biggest problem with previous all-star formats was that players refused to check, hit or compete.
What you got were mostly line rushes going one way and then the other. As a result, there were double-digit scores for both teams. Three-on-three is mostly wide-open, too, with teams trading turns anyway. Except, it’s fun.
What the NHL has failed to do since coming up with this format has been to perfect it. They’ve also failed to fix other things about the all-star game that are broken.
In Edmonton, fans were polled about which NHL event they’d rather see at Rogers Place when the Ice District is complete.
A large majority chose the entry draft.
One poll even asked the question: Do we even want the NHL All- Star Game?
Along the way, the NHL made the game primarily a schmoosea-thon for sponsors. It also became a money grab with tickets to two events: the skills competition and the game.
It lost, under whatever format, the appeal to the average fan and any sense of belief that it belonged to them.
The fans themselves, by voting Draisaitl in, have made it less of a farce than it would have been this season. But it didn’t fix anything. In leaving players like Monahan out, the all-star game is still broken.
As long as all 31 teams have to have a player in the game, you’re going to have far too many players who deserve to be in the allstar game not in attendance.
When the event hits Edmonton, it’ll be 32 teams.
The solution, to me, is to make the skills event the one where all 32 teams are represented wearing their own team uniforms.
The actual all-star game should be reserved for actual all-stars, especially the ones who lift you out of your seats in regular-season, three-on-three overtime.
Guys like Leon Draisaitl. And you could add a couple more of those to each of the four teams.