Ovechkin won his third
straight breakaway challenge, Chara broke his own 2-year-old record for the
hardest shot and players from the All-Star team Staal put together won five of
six events Saturday night in the NHL’s SuperSkills competition.
In this prelude to an
All-Star game like none other, Staal’s team led from start to finish in a 33-22
victory over Team Lidstrom.
“I thought we did pretty
good” choosing the team, Staal said. “Obviously, we’re going to see (Sunday)
during the game, but tonight, it worked out with some good wins in some of the
events.”
The changes in the All-Star
roster format meant a fresh look for the skills competition, too.
The Carolina captain and
Nicklas Lidstrom of Detroit chose up the sides for teams that carry their names
one night earlier during a televised 18-round draft. Players earned team points
in the skills competition by winning preliminary heats and finals in some
contests; by placing first, second or third in others or by scoring goals in
the elimination shootout.
Ovechkin, the Washington
Capitals’ star, came up with a few nifty moves to win hockey’s equivalent of
the slam dunk contest — most notably, flipping his stick and bringing the puck
in with the knob before flipping it back and beating a sprawled-out Marc-Andre
Fleury of Pittsburgh.
“I just came up with that,”
said Ovechkin, who received 38.5 percent of the fan voting via text messaging.
Fellow Team Staal member P.K. Subban of Montreal had 21.3 percent.
Chara set the hardest-shot
record with a 105.9 mph slap shot in the final of that competition. In addition
to that blast and Ovechkin’s breakaway win, Team Staal also produced winners in
the competitions for fastest skater (the Islanders’ Michael Grabner ), accuracy
(Vancouver’s Daniel Sedin ) and the shootout (Anaheim’s Corey Perry ). Team
Lidstrom’s only victory came in the skills challenge relay.
“We’ll let them have the
skills competition, and we’ll try to take the game tomorrow,” quipped Team
Lidstrom’s Patrick Kane . “I think a couple years down the road, you won’t even
know if you won or lost the skills competition. Two years ago in Montreal, I
don’t know if we won or lost. It’s all about the memories. It’s all about fun.”
Many of the oohs and aahs
were reserved for the breakaway challenge, the one event that’s all about style
and not scoring.
Subban opened with a blatant
attempt to curry favor with the home folks, pulling on the jersey of Carolina
rookie Jeff Skinner — and that move was met with earsplitting delight from the
rowdy Caniacs. Subban later admitted the idea came from San Jose’s Dan Boyle .
“(Subban) just came up to me
5 seconds before he shot it and said, ‘I need your jersey,”’ Skinner said. “I
just took it off, and he put on a good show.”
Perry skated in on Fleury
while carrying the puck on his raised stick — as if he were playing lacrosse.
Team Lidstrom’s Anzi Kopitar tried to kick the puck onto his stick as he neared
Carey Price . And Ovechkin flipped the puck up with his stick and swung at it
like a baseball player.
Chara also brought the RBC
Center crowd to its feet in the final of the hardest-shot contest, breaking the
record he set at the most recent skills competition in Montreal in 2009 and
defeating Nashville’s Shea Weber, who hit 104.8 mph on the radar gun in the
preliminary round but topped out at 103.4 mph in the final.
“I think the limit is always
going to be pushed,” Chara said. “Who knows? It could go all the way to 110.”
The six goalies repeatedly
came up big in the night’s final event, the score-or-you’re-done shootout. Only
two skaters — Perry and Tampa Bay’s Martin St. Louis of Team Lidstrom — made it
through two rounds.
Perry went first in Round 3
and his shot got by Tim Thomas and ricocheted in off the crossbar for his third
goal of the event. That put the pressure on St. Louis, who faced Carolina’s Cam
Ward . St. Louis tried a spin-around backhand and Ward — who Staal took with
the No. 1 pick in Friday night’s draft — stuffed him to cheers from the
hometown crowd.
One of Team Lidstrom’s two
eight-man entries claimed the relay competition, completing a gauntlet of
shooting, skating and stickhandling in 2 minutes, 9 seconds. That lineup had
Lidstrom, Brad Richards and Loui Eriksson firing one-timers passed to them by
rookie Oliver Ekman-Larsson , Henrik Sedin shooting into a miniature net, St.
Louis navigating the cones, Matt Duchesne finishing the stick-work drill and
Jonathan Toews knocking out four targets.
Daniel Sedin needed just four
shots to hit the four corner targets in 7.3 seconds in the accuracy
competition. He then topped Kane in the final, taking care of the targets in
8.9 seconds.
Grabner won the fastest
skater competition that opened the evening by winning a final runoff of
rookies. He raced around the rink in 14.2 seconds in the final to beat
Edmonton’s Taylor Hall (14.7 seconds).
But the most interesting race
was among the first: Ward vs. Thomas in a first-ever matchup of goalies in full
pads. Thomas took a spill in the second turn and that allowed Ward to coast
across the finish line in 18.895 seconds.
“Not very often do I do a hard
full lap,” Ward said. “I was just trying not to fall in the corner.”
