Each Friday throughout the season, I'll provide you with my predictions on whose stock is on the rise and whose is failing miserably like
This weekend the NHL takes a break for its ritual of winter, the All-Star Game. Pointless? Maybe. TV ratings? Not so much. But hey, it's still a great chance to see good players who felt like attending the best players in the league. OK, maybe not exactly that either. Look. It's here and we're going to talk about it because it's not going away. At least not by Sunday. And apparently as much as everyone likes to complain about the game's problems, folks can't seem to stop talking about it. And don't worry -- we won't just rehash the same old arguments in here.
Buy: Conspiracy theories. It seems like every year about this time we hear about how irrelevant the All-Star Game is. Everyone and their dog decides to type up a column about how useless it is and why we need to re-work it or get rid of it completely -- heck, even I did. But isn't it amazing, despite the sagging TV ratings, how much talk the Game garners every year?
Every year, we endure the endless debate of who got snubbed from the rosters. That always seems to be the talk of the town. But why do so if most of us supposedly don't care? If everyone is so busy not being interested in the ASG, then why does everyone feel the need to vent about the starters and snubs? Wouldn't those same people just not care about that too? It's all a little too fishy. Too fishy for me.
Sell: Jeremy Roenick not being a part of this weekend's announcing crew. I went on and on about him last week, so I'll spare you, but I'll make one point and then let it be. Roenick has been out since December 11th with a shoulder injury and this would be a great time to give him a trial run in front of a microphone.
OK, and for the record, I can settle for Rick DiPietro instead.
Buy: Giving the shootout competition another shot. OK, so the goalies kind of took some pride in the thing and, you know, tended the goal. OK, so it was a little underwhelming outside of Ovechkin's attempt. It was the first year, let's at least give it one more chance. I think there was potential shown -- helmets off, some creativity -- and now that the NHL is going to put some random netminder out there, we might get some goals. I can only hope this year's competitors are going to try and be a bit more creative. Ovechkin-like, per se.
Sell: Replacing the All-Star Game with the World Cup, Olympics or other random event in February. Yesterday in the Toronto Star, Damien Cox reported that the NHLPA is considering having some sort of rotational feature event each February. That's a funny joke. So instead of players passing up the All-Star Game, they now will have a different event to pass up every year. Good stuff. I'm not sure the idea was thought all the way through either, since the NHL is planning to possibly break off it's Olympic commitments after 2010. Sounds more like the PA wants a winter recess than any actual event.
