All Star Week-End

This week-end is the NHL All-Star game and the NFL ProBowl. I guess that means its a slow week-end for sports. I'm not a fan of All-Star Extravaganzas. The players don't want to get hurt so they don't play the game the way it is intended. As such, it turns into a schmaltzy love-in. It doesn't showcase the game and it doesn't matter.

This year the NHL decided to try and spice up their lacklustre no-hitter by having a draft of the players by the two team captains. The whole idea was pitched with, who will be picked first? Who will be picked last? Will the last pick feel slighted? Really? There are around 800 players currently in the NHL. I believe 44 go to the All-Star Game. So you are looking at the top 5 or 6 per cent of the league. If you are going to mope about being picked last in a game that doesn't matter, consisting of the top 6 per cent in the world in what you do, then the league has an image problem. Considering many potential fans see NHL players as over-paid prima donnas a guy sulking about being picked last would only serve to hurt the image of the game they are trying to showcase. I don't know who was picked last because I don't care. Logically I also don't know how they reacted.

Of course tonight the NHL is having their skills competition. It sounds like a good idea. We always wonder who can skate the fastest and shoot the hardest. In delivery, it doesn't go over as well. There is no flow. Most of the time the players are standing around the benches. It is made up of the All-Stars not the individuals who may be the fastest or shoot the hardest. All this leads to the crowd wanting to be in it but it never really happens.

Last year the NFL moved the ProBowl to the week before the Superbowl in an attempt to have the fans remember it. In football, just like any sport, when the champ is crowned, that's it. The fans have spent their last ounce of energy on the sport for a while. To keep the Pro-Bowl in mind they now play it before the fans forget. The players selected from the two Superbowl teams do not attend. They have a bigger mission. As such you don't get to see the best players from the best teams. In actual fact that doesn't really matter. Football is so complex that they have to put in special rules to simplify the game. Its for the safety of the players. Unfortunately it reduces the best in the world to Pop Warner football.

I know there are a lot of people who like to watch these events. Some of it is out of curiosity. Some is out of loyalty. In the big picture it probably doesn't harm or help the game. I also understand why a league wants to showcase its talent. It should bring in more fans. Unfortunately I don't think it does. All-Star games don't show off the sport.

You can argue it recognizes the players for a job well done and it does. You can still pick the teams but you don't have to play the game. When you are the best players in the best league in the world, you don't have anything left to prove.

I don't see All-Star games dying anytime soon but I wish they would.