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Suzuki Wins First Pitch’n Puck Challenge |
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I used to love the All-Star weekend skills competition, back in the days when the players seemed to care. Al Iafrate and Al MacInnis vying for the hardest shot title, Ray Bourque picking his spot to hit 4 targets in 4 shots and Mike Gartner and Peter Bondra turning on the jets to get the fastest skater title. Yesterday though, I could only watch an hour of the annual event.
I don’t know why but it just felt like I was watching a bunch of kids standing around waiting for their turn. Furthermore, I cannot understand for the life of me why they couldn’t just hold the events and finish them in one go, what’s with doing the first wave of the fastest skater and then moving on to another event?
It was interesting to see the goalies puck shooting skills in the Tendy Tandems I’ll admit but then on the other side of that challenge when the goalies had to stop breakaways, it was like the shooters weren’t even trying. I know, there’s no 2-points on the line, but the fans want to see the best in the game try their hardest.
The event being held in Florida, there were a couple of new events, namely the Splash Shot Challenge and the Pitch’n Puck Challenge. In the first, the shooter had to shoot at surfboards to make them fall before shooting at a target that made a player fall in water. While that was somewhat funny at first, the novelty soon wore off.
In the second, players were on a golf course and shooting a puck to get to the green, once they got on there, the puck was swapped for a golf ball which they had to put with a hockey stick. Canadiens’ captain Nick Suzuki was the only player to put in a birdie for the win, cue the jokes about of course the Habs player is good at golfing, they never make the playoffs…
The highlight of the night was Trevor Zegras taking to Twitter and tweeting what most everyone thought, a sleepy emoji. Sure, seeing Croby and Ovechkin on a breakaway with Ovi Jr. was cute, but that’s not what makes fans tune in, fans want to see pure skill displays, we’ve got plenty of cute time-wasting videos on Instagram and Tik Tok if you ask me.
Somehow, the NHL managed to ruin the only part of the All-Star weekend I actually liked. This afternoon, we’ll be treated to another 3 on 3 tournament which means nothing and in which the players won’t even be trying. I think it’s high time the league took a long hard look at the All-Star weekend and realized that it’s not working. It’s not worth losing 5 days of real and good hockey for. The players now get a break anyways with each team getting a bye week, enough with this time wasting event that does nothing to sell the league, the fact that the arena was half empty last night spoke volumes about how the fans feel about it.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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