All-Stars lack incentive to play hard

The National Hockey League's annual All-Star Game, to be held Sunday in Raleigh, N.C., is featuring a new twist that the league hopes will make the game more relevant.

Rather than stage a traditional matchup of conferences, for the first time the two rosters will be selected by a player draft, with the respective team captains — Carolina's Eric Staal and Detroit's Nicklas Lidstrom — selecting the lineups from a pool of 52 players, six of whom were selected by fan voting, the remainder by the league's hockey operations department.

Twelve rookies have been selected to participate in the skills competition, which will be held on Saturday, but the league won't stage the NHL YoungStars Game featuring rookie talent, as it has in previous years.

This draft is an obvious ploy to heighten fan interest in what has become in recent years a meaningless showcase of the league's best players.

The league is playing up the possibility of teammates such as Chicago's Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, or Washington's Alexander Ovechkin and Mike Green or, in the case of Vancouver's Sedin twins, brothers playing against each other, as well as hyping speculation over which order the players could be selected in the draft.

The concept would supposedly harken back to the game's pond hockey roots, where players choose up sides.

This isn't the first time the NHL has tinkered with the All-Star Game in hope of injecting new life into what had become a boring format.

From 1998 to 2002 the game featured a team of North American stars squaring off against their European rivals, hoping to cash in on the hype created by the league's participation in the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics.

It's unlikely, however, the ensuing game between the “drafted” teams will carry the same intensity and excitement as a Winter Olympic matchup or an NHL regular-season game.

Once the hoopla over the player draft has passed and the puck drops Sunday, we probably will see the same passionless game of no-contact shinny, with lots of scoring and little defensive or physical play, that we've seen in All-Star Games for years.

And, no, the product wouldn't be better if sidelined stars such as Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin or Jarome Iginla (compassionate reasons) were playing.

Various efforts in the past to improve the quality of the All-Star Game and increase fan interest have resulted in TV ratings failure and have done little to attract new fans to the NHL.

No matter how much the league toys with the format, the players won't risk injury participating in a meaningless game. Thus, they won't perform with the same level of intensity they bring to even a regular-season game.

Since 2008, the Winter Classic — the NHL's annual New Year's Day outdoor game between two select teams — has become the league's true midseason showcase. It's not just because of the novelty of playing a game outdoors in a football or baseball stadium, but also because it's a regular-season game, with points on the line that count toward the standings, potentially making the difference between making or missing the playoffs.

In other words, in the Winter Classic there's something to play for, whereas there's nothing on the line in the All Star Game to motivate the players.

The best way for the NHL to showcase its top talent remains the Winter Olympics. Another could be to perhaps stage a World Cup of Hockey every non-Olympic year either in the preseason or at midseason.

A World Cup tournament, however, might be a tough sell to the players. They could be resistant to tournaments that interfere with their training camp routines, while the team owners likely wouldnt want to shut the league down for one or two weeks to stage the tournament every midseason.

Perhaps it would be better for the NHL to continue its Winter Olympic participation, eliminate the All-Star Game entirely and build up the hype of the Winter Classic in the US every New Year's Day followed by the Heritage Classic in Canada every February between two Canadian teams.

Those would certainly be better options than another meaningless All-Star Game, regardless of how the rosters are drawn up.