Good point. I hadn’t noticed that. I did think Arnott’s participation was odd, but Sedin and Kopitar completely slipped my mind.

You would think so…but then you realize that Jason Arnott participated in both accuracy shooting and hardest shot while Henrik Sedin got to do nothing except move a puck around other pucks for 3 seconds. And where was Kopitar all night?

Great comment. I can definitely see how my “swift dismissal” comes out of my being a Wings fan. Still, Yzerman’s status as a leader is, as you suggest, a League-wide thing, and Alfredsson still has a ways to go. If he can win two or three Cups before he retires, he may be able to reach that tier.

Justin,

The coaches probably take a lot of input from the players and they also have to make sure everyone gets to display a “Skill.” So the occasional oddball selection is to be expected, I guess.

As for Lecavalier’s participating in the hardest shot competition, at least he didn’t disappoint. He would have won had Chara not been in it. That makes him an even more formidable opponent. It’s just too bad the Lightning are so bad around him this season.

On CBC, they had Joe Thornton talking about how fast Campbell is, so maybe it wasn’t as incongruous as it seemed. I do agree with you on Gaborik. There’s no reason he shouldn’t have been in that competition.

Year after year I expect certain players to participate in certain events. And year after year I instead find completely odd choices being made by the coaches. For example, this year I expected to finally watch Kovalchuk participate in a hardest shot competition. Instead it’s…Lecavalier?? And Brian Campbell vs. Duncan Keith in the fastest skater comp??? What about Gaborik, who has been dazzling fans with his breathtaking speed since his arrival to the NHL?!

It’s things like these strange choices that is contributing to the decline of the NHL All Star weekend’s popularity.

As far as being a leader, I don’t think any of us REALLY know. All you hear is his teammates talking about what a great leader he was, and he talked the talk and walked the walk. But no one that wasn’t in the locker room knows JUST how great a leader Yzerman was, nor do any of us, especially those that have never played a sport at an elite level, know tangibly just WHAT a leader provides to his team in terms of winning games and championships.

Yzerman is definitely way ahead of Alfredsson in terms of his status of NHL history. Part of his not being the superstar as he got older was that he didn’t HAVE to be, and he has certainly carried himself better and been more consistent than Alfredsson. I’m not arguing that Alfredsson is a better player, I hope that’s been clear. But I do think that some of your swift dismissal of the idea IS the Red Wing fan in you. I certainly can’t imagine them in the same sentence, but forced to consider their roles within their teams, I can begin to imagine the possibility :).