Skills To Pay The Bills

The NHL has just released details for the decreasingly exciting ASG Skills Competition which will invade your televisions on Saturday January 24th. Seriously, remember how exciting these things used to be back in the day. What happened? Are players less skilled or is it just that I'm older and jaded by the hockey world. It's probably them.

To open the evening, four of the league's speedsters will take the Bell Centre ice in an attempt to beat Mike Gartner's 13-year-old record for the fastest (13.386 seconds) circuit of an NHL rink in the NHL Fastest Skater competition.

Once that thrill fest is over that's when the players get to show off their real skills with the Scotiabank NHL Fan Fav Breakaway Challenge. With full access to the entire offensive zone, each shooter gets one minute to complete as many attempts as possible at a routine that ends with a shot on goal. Once all six skaters have performed, fans will vote by text message to determine the winner.

Wasn't that judged by a "celebrity judging panel" last year that included former Atlanta Thrashers captain Scott Mellanby, former Atlanta Hawks basketball star Dominique Wilkins, Taylor Kitsch from Friday Night Lights, and broadcaster Bill Clement. Were those guys busy? Or could they seriously not do any better? Here's my idea of how that meeting went...

NHL exec #1: Okay, it looks like Carrot Top is busy that night and won't be able to judge.
NHL exec #2: Well who else did you ask?
NHL exec #1: Gilbert Gottfried, Ben Stein, Gerard Depardieu, and Tom Arnold....They all said no.
NHL exec #2: Alright...well let's just have the fans vote.
NHL exec #1: Brilliant!

Once fans are done having their minds blown from the Breakaway Challenge, the top young players in the game will take center stage in the sixth NHL YoungStars Game. They must've put this here to give fans a chance to text in and vote for that Breakaway thing.

Following that up is the league's sharpshooters shooting at foam targets in the McDonald's NHL Accuracy Shooting. Then you'll have the guys with the big shot blast away in the Hardest Shot Competition in an attempt to break the record set by Al Iafrate with a 105.2-mph slap shot at the 1993 NHL All-Star Weekend in Montreal.

Then the night mercifully comes to an end with an elimination type shootout. All 36 skaters and six goalies will play in the elimination shootout. The six All-Star goalies will conduct a random draw to select the six shooters each will face in the first round. Only the shooters who score will advance. The competition will continue until a round is completed.

So based upon my calculations, with all the events and all 36 players taking part in a shootout, this event should take approximately 5 hours to complete. Five hours you could spend doing much more rewarding things with your Saturday night. Like washing your dog, knitting a sweater, or writing a long lost friend. What did you have in mind, you dirtbags?


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