Anyone know why I haven’t written about the All-Star Game?

Hopefully you could take a wild guess and determine that the answer to that is “because it sucked.” Nothing much to write home about with this year’s edition. And maybe it’s because I hadn’t seen one in so long and the only remaining memories were fond ones, but this year’s NHL all-star game seemed even worse than they usually are for some reason. Every player’s play seemed just that extra little bit less inspired than usual. I had to see it to believe it, but this year I think they actually found a way to turn the intensity down to a new low.

I certainly do not think it would be fair to place the blame for this on any players’ shoulders in particular – they all weren’t trying. But since the all-star game is supposed to be the showcase for the brightest stars of the game, it is to be noted that it may have been the brightest stars of the game who shone the dimmest in Dallas. In what was likely to be the first of many times we saw Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin start the game together, they failed to produce anything spectacular. It was only a shame that they couldn’t have traded Martin Brodeur to the West. I realize the goalies don’t want to pull their groins or anything, but Brodeur’s goals against average is likely the same number that would have come about if they’d just taken his jersey and tied a sleeve to each goalpost. The less said the better about the formerly exciting Young Stars Game. If anyone made more than one hard skating stride in that game, I didn’t see it. I know it’s maybe not an ideal arrangement for the NHL, but this year they were lucky they held the game in the middle of the week, and aired it on Versus. If anybody had actually seen it, they would have risked losing the few remaining American fans they have.

Little known fact about the NHL all-star game: in case your arena burns down or something the day before, they require you to have an NHL-sized backup venue where they can hold the game as planned, despite the terrible earthquake/fire/mudslide that has destroyed your arena. As a result of this, they never have; and for the forseeable future, never will hold the game in Ottawa. This is a reality that used to make me angry as an Ottawa hockey fan. I am happy to say that that time is now over.

I know it’s the all-star game, but I could have put on my skates and hopped the boards and taken the place of anyone on the ice. It’s supposed to be an entertaining spectacle of the greatest players in the game showing off the skills that made them the best, but this year’s edition of the NHL all-star game was none of those things. It unquestionably was not worth watching, so the only question that remains is whether or not it’s worth holding another one. This year’s all-star game answered that question quite to my satisfaction, and the answer is no.

There are a number of other things they could do instead of what they do now to make the all-star game matter. One of them is to play it on the weekend, airing it on a TV channel somebody actually watches. For that to work, it has to be something that people actually want to see, and there is little viability in the current format for that. Given the current nature of the league as a more gate-driven game than a television one, perhaps their great spectacle need not be primarily a television event. Perhaps rather than “All-Star Week,” they could give “National Hockey Week” a try. There are unlimited possibilities for ways that the league and its teams could get involved with their local communities. They could furnish some time off for the players by having each team play just one home game – two games in the week for each team – play them saturday and sunday – a home-and-home with the much lauded ‘divisional rivals’ that every team is supposed to have now (entertaining ‘rivalry games’ like Toronto and Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and Nashville and… Columbus!), and give the players the rest of the week off. Then give away a whole lot of free tickets – not in secret to pad attendance figures like they do now, but in a well-publicized effort to create goodwill with the community, to introduce new fans to the game, and to say thank you to the ones they already have. Have players from every team visit local schools and community centers, and build a life-long relationship between the team and the fans and seasons ticketholders of the future. Hold as many meet-and-greet and public appearances with the team as possible, and get the stars of the NHL on as many TV shows and in as many newspapers as possible. It is truly pointless for the league to try and showcase its stars if nobody knows them from a hole in the ground anyway. They must create recognition for the magnetic names, faces, and personalities of which there is no shortage in the league. It is in all its failures that the NHL all-star game is a metaphor for the years of much more grand failures of the league in marketing itself.

I have no expectation that any of this will happen. This is the National Hockey League after all, where nothing changes but the uniforms. However, I have presented a new idea, and that’s something that nobody at the league offices has done in quite some time. It doesn’t have to be my idea, but the NHL has to do something different. Things couldn’t get much worse than they are now, so I see no harm in trying. In the all-star game’s place, what they need is something to help create a broader audience of people who enjoy the game of hockey, and want to come to games. What they currently have is an unrepresentative, unentertaining shinny game played on a day where people have better things to do than watch sports, on a television channel nobody could find even if they wanted to watch it, showcasing “stars” that they’ve never heard of anyway. The National Hockey League indeed faces an uphill battle in attracting an American mass audience to its game. In the end, the all-star game is just another example of how they try to go up that hill on a tricycle, while other sports speed by in all-terrain vehicles.

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