Team Alfie Edges Team Chara in Skills

The All-Star Game events began this Thursday with the official draft of the players to either Team Chara or Alfie with the assistance of alternative captains Henrik Lundqvist and Joffrey Lupul. Who also helped to decide which player on each team would participate in the events for the skills competition.

Team Alfie took Team Chara in the entire competition with a 21-12 victory. Alfie started off strong in the first event of the fastest skater in which rookie New York Ranger Hagelin stole the show and won the event. In the total six points allotted for the event, Team Alfie received four which gave them an early lead against Team Chara.

The skills competition is a fun event, and the all stars proved this was true, especially ones on Team Chara like Corey Perry and Patrick Kane who showed off their humor in the Breakaway challenge.

As a fan it’s always interesting to watch the players have a good time with it. We saw Kane, who was announced as the winner by fan voting of 47%, don a superman cape and Clark Kent glasses to score on goaltender Elliot. In his second attempt he continued with the theatrics by using a trick puck, which surprised everyone in the audience. Kane’s teammate Perry also showed his moves with spinning the puck on a high stick and scoring a goal with a little goalie stick in his second attempt. The action surprised everyone, even Scott Hartnell who was mic’ed up for the event and said, “For a moment there I thought he was going to undress.” The forwards and defensemen were not the only ones showing off in the breakway challenge goaltender Carey Price turned around in the net and watched the puck through the glass in a classic “tebowing” move.

We saw another rookie steal the show in the accurance shooting event with rookies Benn and Read went up against each other in the final event to determine the winner. In the end Benn had proved the more precise by winning the event for Team Chara by hitting all the targets in under 11 seconds.

Team Alfie took the two heats on the Relay challenge where the Sedin Twins and Stamkos impressed everybody with their skills. Both the Sedins took the difficult passing accurancy portion in their respective heats. Henrik nailed three in a row which was impressive after seeing Patrick Kane struggle with scoring over the obstacle in Team Chara’s heat. Stamkos impressed fan immediately with his ability to ace the one timer event at a awkward angle. He made it look like cake to everybody else, which made up for his slightly embrassing play during the accurancy challenge.

Perhaps the most anticipated event following the relay was the Hardest shot. Team Chara had this one in the bag with towering Chara taking the event. He even beat his record from last year (105.9 mph) to increase that record to an astounding 108.8. When Chara came aboard the other players knew they had to step it up, even Shea Weber impressed by beating Chara’s previous record with 106 mph, but it clearly wasn’t enough. Alfredsson went up against Chara in the finale of the event but his still impressive 101.3 mph could not beat Chara’s ridiculous shot at 108.8 mph.

The finale of the event was the elimination shootout in which Stamkos was again a top contender. Lately Stamkos has been having trouble in the shootout for his own team, but in the finale he made up for it which proves why he is the top goal scorer in the league.

With all the talent we saw last night, fans can only anticipate a lot of action in this afternoon’s all star game.