In January, the NHL announced the players who would be attending the annual All-Star Game, held at FLA Live Arena in Sunrise, Florida. After the first round of selections, which included some of the league’s best, the fans went online to vote their favorite player into the game.
As the All-Star Weekend approaches, injuries have taken a handful of big names out of the game, like Auston Matthews, Matty Bieners and Tage Thompson. That has forced the league to make a few adjustments to the four divisional rosters. How the NHL has handled the situation this year continues to ruffle fans’ feathers across the globe, causing many to question whether they will tune in. Overall, the NHL should readjust its strategies to avoid the trend of driving viewers away.
Let’s recap how the selection process went and where we stand.
NHL All-Star Game roster overview
The NHL announced the first batch of All-Star Game participants on Jan. 5, 2023, which included some of the game’s best players like Connor McDavid, Alex Ovechkin and Linus Ullmark. Their selection process had one member from all 32 teams, giving everyone equal representation at the event.
Since the league has four divisions, there are four lineups, and the original ones broke down as follows:
Metropolitan Division
Sidney Crosby (Pittsburgh Penguins), Johnny Gaudreau (Columbus Blue Jackets), Kevin Hayes (Philadelphia Flyers), Jack Hughes (New Jersey Devils), Brock Nelson (New York Islanders), Alex Ovechkin (Washington Capitals), Tage Thompson (Buffalo Sabres), Andrei Svechnikov (Carolina Hurricanes), Igor Shesterkin (New York Rangers)
Atlantic Division
Nikita Kucherov (Tampa Bay Lightning), Dylan Larkin (Detroit Red Wings), Mitchell Marner (Toronto Maple Leafs), Nick Suzuki (Montreal Canadiens), Brady Tkachuk (Ottawa Senators), Matthew Tkachuk (Florida Panthers), Linus Ullmark (Boston Bruins)
Central Division
Kirill Kaprizov (Minnesota Wild), Clayton Keller (Arizona Coyotes), Jason Robertson (Dallas Stars), Vladimir Tarasenko (St. Louis Blues), Seth Jones (Chicago Blackhawks), Cale Makar (Colorado Avalanche), Josh Morrissey (Winnipeg Jets), Juuse Saros (Nashville Predators)
Pacific Division
Matty Beniers (Seattle Kraken), Kevin Fiala (Los Angeles Kings), Nazem Kadri (Calgary Flames), Connor McDavid (Edmonton Oilers), Elias Pettersson (Vancouver Canucks), Troy Terry (Anaheim Ducks), Erik Karlsson (San Jose Sharks), Logan Thompson (Vegas Golden Knights)
Since the All-Star Game is meant to showcase skills, there’s more of a focus on offense, which explains the lopsided numbers by position (30 forwards, 6 defensemen, 8 goalies). On paper, these lineups look great, with almost every team’s leading scorer making the cut.
NHL All-Star fan voting helps shape full ASG roster
After selecting a player from every team, the NHL allowed fans to pick the final three members of each roster through an online vote, an event that concluded on Jan. 17. Immediately after, the league announced the winners:
Metropolitan Division – Artemi Panarin (New York Rangers), Adam Fox (New York Rangers), Ilya Sorokin (New York Islanders)
Atlantic Division – Auston Matthews (Toronto Maple Leafs), David Pastrnak (Boston Bruins), Andrei Vasilevskiy (Tampa Bay Lightning)
Central Division – Mikko Rantanen (Colorado Avalanche), Nathan McKinnon (Colorado Avalanche), Connor Hellebuyck (Winnipeg Jets)
Pacific Division – Leon Draisaitl (Edmonton Oilers), Stuart Skinner (Edmonton Oilers), Bo Horvat (Vancouver Canucks)
The fans voted in several players from the same team, meaning that the Rangers, Avalanche and Oilers would have three members of their organization at the event. Meanwhile, the Islanders, Maple Leafs, Lightning, Jets, and Canucks got lucky and will also have multiple skaters in the lineup.
But there have been some injuries to key players who earned their spot at the All-Star Game and are no longer attending. Those names include Auston Matthews (TOR), Matty Beniers (SEA) and Tage Thompson (BUF). The league found their replacements in Aleksander Barkov (Florida Panthers), Chandler Stephenson (Vegas Golden Knights) and Rasmus Dahlin (Buffalo Sabres).
The NHL doesn’t do itself any favors with All-Star Game roster adjustments
For those people keeping track at home, the NHL immediately replaced Matthews (fan vote) with Barkov when the Maple Leafs announced he would be out for three weeks with a lower-body injury. Adding Barkov, the captain of the Panthers, made sense because he’s a great player, and his team is hosting the All-Star Game. Ultimately, not adding another Panthers member to the lineup would have raised many questions because many other teams have multiple players coming to town, and the hosts would have only one.
At that point, the league had only a single roster adjustment. However, that was until the Canucks traded their captain Horvat (fan vote) earlier this week to the Islanders. Shortly after the blockbuster trade, the NHL notified fans that Horvat would remain a representative of the Canucks, not the Islanders, causing many people to vent their frustrations on social media.
Lately, people have tuned out the All-Star Game and the skills competition, and moments like this continue to fuel the divide between the two sides. It only gets worse. The latest questionable move by the league drove the wedge a little deeper between the game and their fan bases.
After recently suffering an injury, the Kraken’s Bieners (selected) got hurt in a game and will end up missing significant time with an injury. Instead of choosing another player from the Kraken, the NHL decided on Stephenson from the Golden Knights as his replacement. Consequently, the resulting roster adjustment left the league’s newest team without representation at the franchise’s second-ever All-Star game.
Of course, none of these decisions fall on the players, whether they get selected or not. But someone in the NHL should have realized this issue and addressed it to prevent one of the worse public relations errors you could make. The NHL invests so much time, money and energy in growing the game — not just in the United States but globally — that they can’t make critical mistakes like this because it’s a black eye for the league, one they can’t easily escape.
At least when the Sabres recently announced that their leading scorer, Tage Thompson, would not be able to attend the game, the NHL selected his teammate Dahlin to replace him. Moreover, Dahlin has had a great season and should have already been selected for the game. The league got a do-over, even if it was too late, and learned from their mistakes by selecting the team’s next-best player.
The NHL needs to fix its All-Star Game problems before fans force them to hit a reset
There is no going back to fix past wrongs, like with Bieners and Horvat. Eventually, the media will forget, and the fans will move on to something else. The league will have an entire calendar year before the next All-Star game to iron out any roster adjustment issues like the ones that occurred in the last few weeks.
In the end, the All-Star Weekend festivities are supposed to be a time to celebrate the game and the players who earned the right to showcase their skills to a national audience. However, when the league grabs all the headlines for the wrong reasons, it takes away from the event and casts a shadow over those who are there to have fun and interact with fans.
Plenty of people will watch, and a handful will not. Overall, if the league doesn’t stop stumbling over essential roster selections, the scales may tip to the wrong side, and the NHL may have to hit reset on the entire event.