TORONTO — Connor McDavid emerged as the $1 million winner of Friday’s skills competition. Auston Matthews won the MVP award after his team won the 3-on-3 tournament on Saturday.
Can we drop the USA vs. Canada pack now for next winter’s Four-Way Tournament? Will he have two outstanding centers at the 2026 Olympics, meaning he will have to wait until two outstanding athletes compete in Milan for their respective countries?
If you want the face of the league to also be the face of the All-Star festivities, Toronto was the perfect place for this year’s midseason celebration. That was it. It happened because the players agreed.
“I mean, it’s ultimately up to what the fans think, but I feel like we came here to put on a show and we did that,” said McDavid, a Toronto native. “I think it was fun for everyone from the draft.
“It was a great weekend. It was a work weekend and a tiring weekend. I look forward to returning to Edmonton and participating in regularly scheduled programs.”
If your team was on a league-record-tying 16-game winning streak in Las Vegas on Tuesday, you would too, just like the Oilers.
McDavid’s goal with 5.4 seconds left in regulation sent the first game into a shootout, and coach Peter Laviolette’s team was all over the place. He was on stage announcing the NHL’s return to the Olympics.
No. 97, a longtime advocate of restoring the best on best to hockey, was more than a bystander in making that happen.
“The athletes have a voice and they’re using it to their advantage,” McDavid said after participating in the skills competition. “I think that’s a good thing.”
It will be interesting to see what role, if any, McDavid plays in terms of collective bargaining, as his current contract expires after the 2025-26 season. Professional sports unions are always strongest when their most prominent players assume visible leadership roles.
However, that is a long way off.
For decades, people have complained about the meaninglessness of the All-Star Game. Baseball’s All-Star Game ended in a tie because the teams lacked a pitcher. So this Pro Bowl isn’t flag football?
But it would take a professional scolding to find much fault with the NHL All-Star presentation here this week. Saturday’s entertaining 3-on-3 tournament culminated with Team Matthews defeating Team McDavid, 7-1, to claim the title. Each match in the first round was decided in a penalty shootout, and the final four matches were played.
Well, Michael Bublé was an unrelenting fiasco in Thursday’s player draft, but that’s rare in the league.
This was an exhibition, and of course it was. No one was going 1,000 miles per hour and there was essentially no physical contact on the ice. But no one laughed about it, not even Nikita Kucherov, who accepted his villainous identity after two days of jeers for his inexplicably half-hearted efforts at Friday’s skills competition.
The $1 million prize given to the winning team didn’t hurt. Vincent Trocheck, a member of the championship team, pointed that out.
When asked when the fun started focusing on winning, the Blueshirt center said, “I think it’s been a mix of both most of the time.” “Obviously it costs a lot of money, but you don’t want to go too hard and you don’t want anyone to get hurt in this kind of game where you just want to have fun.
“But you want to win.”
I don’t know that there’s a greater meaning to the long, winding, grinding 82-game journey that has taken place since this midseason interlude. Those in the building enjoyed his 3-on-3 showcase of the PWHL on Thursday. Fans of his fair seemed to fly out of the park, and at times he drew lines two city blocks long. Diversity was part of the program at various venues across the city of Toronto.
Once upon a time, the All-Star Game was glorified. Back then, players weren’t overexposed as is common practice now. That made these events seem even more special.
Other than the time I went to The Garden to watch the 1973 NHL All-Star Game as a fan sitting in the original section 419, the player introductions were the best part of the night, and I watched Bobby Orr skate on the ice. It was even better when I wiped out while doing it. However, the subsequent matches ended in a slump.
The East team won and Greg Polis scored a few goals and won MVP, but for some reason Blueshirt GM Emile Francis was pegged by the St. Louis winger. In fact, the Cats acquired Polis in the summer of 1974 in exchange for a first-round pitcher and Lawrence Sacharuk. Polis was just as disappointing as a Ranger as he was in the All-Star Game itself.
This event did not disappoint. The NHL put on a good show.
