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YoungStars farce Saturday night exhibition a nightmare for goalies, fansPosted: Sunday February 02, 2003 1:58 AMUpdated: Sunday February 02, 2003 2:48 AM
SUNRISE, Fla. -- Thirty minutes of wide-open hockey Saturday night left us with one obvious conclusion about the YoungStars Game: It isn't really hockey at all. An on-ice replica of video-game hockey perhaps, but it hardly bares a resemblance to the thrilling, regular-season version of NHL hockey. Last year's inaugural YoungStars Game in Los Angeles was an utter joke. Taking advantage of a four-on-four format, Ilya Kovalchuk beat Dan Blackburn for six goals in an MVP effort, and Blackburn's confidence has been toast ever since. At least they had the sense to play five a side this time. Unfortunately, that just meant another player on each side clogging up the ice and not playing defense. Rugged blueliners like Barret Jackman are rendered meaningless in a game where the players don't want to touch each other. Mattias Weinhandl skated around Jackman and beat David Aebischer high to the glove side for a gorgeous goal early in the third period to put the East up 5-3. But it's a scoring chance that would never happen in a regular-season game. "He would be icing his arm after a play like that," Jackman smirked. "You don't want to injure anybody or pull a muscle doing something stupid, so it was just about going out there trying to have fun and letting the guys show where their games are at." The point of the game was to showcase offensive skills, but it couldn't even do that right despite the complete lack of defense being played. Who could've imagined that 11 goals and 42 shots in 30 minutes would be so boring? Neither team generated much flow through the neutral zone, and the action in front of the net was limited. The NHL even put three Panthers on the East roster to try to juice up the contest for the hometown crowd. But there was little buzz in the building, save for Stephen Weiss ' tally at 7:06 of the first period. Things got so complacent on the ice that at 7:52 of the second period, one disgruntled fan jestingly called out from the upper reaches of the sedate Office Depot Center: "Put a body on him!" "I don't think anyone wants to see anybody else get hurt, so the players lay back just a little bit more than usual," East co-coach Perry Pearn said. "That lends itself to players cheating to get on the offensive side of the puck. I don't think you could ever create an environment like the regular season." There's not much sense in attempting to duplicate the atmopshere and intensity of the regular season, but some sort of defensive strategy would be nice. The poor goaltenders saw more odd-man rushes in one night than they have all season. West goalie Aebischer was all smiles following the game, even though he realized he might be in for a long night when he was selected to play in the game. "I came in here knowing that I was going to get scored on," Aebischer said. "If I played well it doesn't get you two points in the standings. My attitude was that if they scored two, I did good. If they scored 10 ... well, too bad. That's the way I had to go into this, because it makes no sense to break your head over it." And while most of the players enjoyed the all-out offensive onslaught, tough-guy Jackman dissented from the majority. Count him among the contingent of folks who would like to see some hitting and intensity in future YoungStars Games. "For me it's not fun at all," he said. "I like to use the body a little bit. I create room that way and is this type of game I can't really show what type of player I am. I had fun down here meeting all the guys, and it's nice to take a little break, but I can't wait until the regular season starts up again." That makes two of us. Jon A. Dolezar covers the NHL for CNNSI.com. Got a comment, question or scoop for Jon? Click here. |
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