NHL Announce All Star Captains

Added on Jan 19, 2011 by J Merrill in

NHL

In the name of bringing more excitement to the game, The NHL is taking a different approach this year to the All Star game. Instead of having the Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference, the teams will now be designated s Team Staal (white jerseys) and Team Lidstrom (dark blue).

We heard the full roster last week, and all of the players voted on who would their captain for the game. All 42 players voted, and it was Staal and Lidstrom who were elected. The selections were sort of a surprise as many people thought Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin would be picked. However, it was Crosby and Kris Letang who said they both backed Lidstrom. Letang said of Lidstrom “This guy is the man. Totally another class.”

Steve Webb from the NHLPA said he phoned up each of the all-stars to talk about potential captains. Three names consistently came up: Lidstrom, Staal and Crosby. Webb said “Lidstrom was a no-brainer. The first couple guys I was calling right out of the gate were saying Staal. I think they recognized with Sidney — his name was always in there — but they always added Staal with Sid maybe not being able to appear.”

Lidstrom said he is going to strategist before the draft, but Staal said he was just going to wing it. Lidstrom said “I’ll see what they want to do. You have to have some sort of game plan going into it. I talked with (Red Wings general manager) Ken Holland this morning and asked for some pointers.”

The NHL 2011 All-Star Game will be played in Raleigh, North Carolina, home of the Carolina Hurricanes. The All-Star Fantasy Draft will be Friday, Jan. 28, to kick off All-Star Weekend, which will be hosted for the first time by the Carolina Hurricanes. Staal and Lidstrom will also decide who will take part in skills competition.

This is how the rest of the festivities will look, until the day of the game. On Friday, January 28, 2011, a fantasy draft event will be held in Raleigh with all 54 NHL players (42 All-Stars and 12 rookies) during which the captains will draft the remaining members of their respective teams. The First selection in the draft will be determined by coin flip and selections will continue on an alternating basis. Then each team will be required to select three goalies, six defensemen and 12 forwards in any order they choose.

After the selection of the All-Star game rosters, the captains will select among the 12 rookies to fill out the rosters for the Honda NHL SuperSkills. Then each team will feature six rookies participating in various skills competitions. Then teams will participate in six different skills, including NHL Fastest Skater, NHL Breakaway Challenge, Accuracy Shooting, Skills Challenge Relay, NHL Hardest shot and the NHL Elimination Shoot Out.