The National Hockey League will be holding its annual All-Star game Tuesday night.
How many of you are going to alter your plans to watch it?
For some reason, only the baseball and basketball all-star contests seem to work for me.
Baseball has a built-in attraction in that there is no interleague play between the National and American Leagues. There is genuine curiousity and interest. And, baseball is a game that doesn’t require practice sessions for players to mesh as a cohesive unit.
The NBA’s annual shoot-out is pure fun. It’s time to shake and bake. It’s time to let let the skywalkers soar. Butter the popcorn, sit back and enjoy because it’s showtime. The players go all out in this one and the results are often scintillating.
Football is a big bore. They use warped rules that prevent blitzes. Many players have been out of action for five or six weeks and aren’t about to bruise themselves for what amounts to nothing more than tip money. No, these guys are in Hawaii basically to work on their tansand maybe catch Don Ho.
Hockey? I’m stumped as to why they play this one.
There were no plans to carry the NHL All-Star game on television in Canada. CTV, which was supposed to carry the game, begged off because it was committed to the Joan Collins mini-series, Sins. CBC was then offered the game but said it couldn’t alter its schedule this late.
The Sports Network, Canada’s national pay-cable service, at the last minute agreed to unscramble its signal so everyone could view the contest.
That kept the MacKenzie brothers from going into an uproar. But how many others would have been upset if there had been no NHL and only Joan Collins slinking across the set?
In the old days, the All-Star game kicked off the year and pitted the defending Stanley Cup champions against the best of the rest (which before 1967 was the five other teams.) That was an interesting concept that saw the Cup kings win seven times while the All-Stars won 10 times and there were two ties.
In 1951 and 1952 the first team All-Stars took on the second team All- Stars.
Now, it just seems like a giant mishmash.
Go ahead, name me a memorable all-star hockey moment other than Wayne Gretzky’s four-goal breakout in 1983 against the late Pelle Lindbergh.
The Hockey News took a poll and only nine percent of those responded favored retaining the current format.
The biggest sentiment was for a return to the Stanley Cup champions versus an All-Star team. Others liked an NHL squad vs. the Soviet Union’s best.
The main reason for the current blase attitude of the players on both sides is that there’s nothing at stake.
Imagine, however, how the ice chips would fly and the boards would rattle if you gave the home ice edge in the Cup finals to the division that won the All-Star game! Tim Kerr, Mark Howe and Brian Propp would have a little added incentive to do well if that were the case.
Fans who didn’t get tickets for the Hartford game could take a tour of the town’s insurance companies and probably get as many thrills.
There will be one emotional moment for Philadelphia fans, however. That will come when the name of Pelle Lindbergh is announced as the starting goalie. A spotlight will shine on the empty net where No. 31 gave us so many thrills. It will be our last chance to say goodbye to someone who gave us so many magical, wonderful moments.
Lindbergh had mixed results in his two All-Star appearances. In 1983 he was blitzed for seven goals, including the four by Gretzky. He never was really the same the remainder of that season.
Last year in Calgary he robbed “The Great One” four times to preserve a 6-4 Wales Conference win.
We’ll never know what Lindbergh would have done this year and in the years to come if he had remained alive. But that is not for us to try to understand. We were fortunate to have known him when we did. We’ll treasure his memory and this last start.
TRIVIA CORNER: 1, Power Play: Who was the first Flyer to play in the NHL All-Star game (1968)? 2, Even Strength: The Flyers had seven men selected to play in the 1979-80 All-Star contest. Name them. 3, Shorthanded: Who had the first hat trick in All-Star play? Hint, it’s still the only one other than the Gretzky 4-goal breakout in 1983.
ANSWERS: 1, Leon Rochefort; 2, Bill Barber, Norm Barnes, Reggie Leach, Rick MacLeish, Pete Peeters, Brian Propp and Jimmy Watson. 3, Terrible Ted Lindsay.
