Fixing the All-star game (well, not really)

January 23, 2009 by chuq · Comments
Filed under: Two for Elbowing: Hockey & Sports

I can’t take credit for this idea, but I dig it and I’m going to tell you all about it anyway. I read this suggestion somewhere yesterday as I was browsing the various blogs where Wing haters were sobbing about this and this. I’ll try to track down who mentioned it yesterday and give credit where it’s due. Also, it’s been done before…back when hockey was hockey and Gary wasn’t in the picture.

Here’s the idea: Next year, when the Wings are defending their twelfth Stanley Cup title? Select an All Star team who will play the Cup Champs.

via KuklasKorner.

I have a couple of problems with this.

First, yes, the league did this before. Yes, All-star games back then were more intensely played games. The problem I have is that nobody can actually show that going back to this old format will actually bring back the old intensity. It just seems there’s this big “and magically, everything is fixed” box in the flowchart here. I don’t buy it, I don’t believe it. We shouldn’t make changes just because.

More important to me, though, is how a change like this can and will affect the real games. What was one of the major speculation points going into this season? Yes — how the Detroit Red Wings would cope with and overcome the “Stanely Cup Hangover” and how most of the recent teams have struggled with it (look at Pittsburgh this year; that hangover is at least part of their problem).

So what’s the plan here? Take the team what’s played the most hockey, the hardest hockey, and when the entire league gets a few days off to rest and get ready for the 2nd half of the season, make the entire team play a hockey game against the league all-stars. Of course, even though it’s an exhibition, we’re expecting them to play hard and physical, make it a “real” game, even though it’s an exhibition, because that’s the point of this change.

In other words, take the team likely most in need of rest across the break, and instead of having a couple of their players (well, this year, NONE, but I don’t blame the Wings for pulling that stunt) involved, have the entire team involved.

How is this good for the game of hockey? How is this remotely good for the team involved? Why do we even want to consider making it HARDER for a champion to repeat a second time — and that’s exactly what this idea would do. Heck, we get back to back cup winners so often, let’s throw another obstacle in their way.

This is simply a bad idea. It’s a “I remember the good parts of the 70’s, if we just do that, everything will be great” concept. The problem is, when you start looking at what the idea means in the larger context of the game today, it has a lot of negatives, and it’s a bad deal for the team and for the league. Fixing an exhibition by messing up the real season seems like a bad tradeoff to me. The players need this time off to rest up and heal; taking a player or two from each team to play in the All-Star is one thing. Taking the entire team and throwing away their downtime? I can’t see any team seriously going with that idea without a fight.

Especially since there’s no real reason to believe that it’d fix the problem people seem to be trying to fix, which is that this is an exhibition, and the players play like it is. Just swapping the players around won’t change that basic reality — just as moving to the North America vs. the World format didn’t a few years back. Honestly, does this really need fixing in the first place?