The St. Louis Blues gave superfan Laila Anderson one of the most important jobs of the 2020 NHL All-Star Game.
At the end of pregame introductions, Laila took the mic and introduced the four St. Louis Blues All-Stars Ryan O’Reilly, Jordan Binnington, David Perron, and Alex Pietrangelo to the capacity crowd at Enterprise Center.
The NHL All-Star Game will be held in St. Louis tonight. The Capitals will be represented by three players: TJ Oshie, Braden Holtby, and John Carlson.
For those interested in ASG merch, the Capitals team store was recently updated with jerseys, shirts, hats, and signed pucks. Get them now before they sell out.
Connor McDavid showed off a pair of hand-painted skates that he received as a gift from hockey equipment manufacturer CCM, Friday. The skates were painted by an artist from Quebec.
The Edmonton Oilers’ superstar opted not to wear the skates at the All-Star Skills Competition as he tried to defend his title in the Fastest Skater Event.
“Thanks for the #NHLAllStar gift @CCMHockey!” McDavid wrote on Instagram. “Going to keep these pieces of art for myself. Ready to go #ALLOUT with my usual set of CCM wheels!”
The NHL hosted their All-Star Skills Competition at St. Louis’s Enterprise Center, Friday night. We covered a few newsy items including Tomas Hertl’s Bieber Mask and John Carlson once again hitting triple digits during the Hardest Shot Competition.
For those of you who missed this year’s edition of Skills, you can watch it in full below. I’ve also videos and the results of all of the individual events. I recommend watching the Elite Women’s 3-on-3 Game. It was very entertaining.
Alex Ovechkin was named to the NHL’s All-Decade First Team on Friday along with Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, Drew Doughty, and Marc-Andre Fleury.
Ovechkin scored the most goals in the decade (437) and had the third-most points (780) behind only Kane (802) and Crosby (788).
“Ovi, Crosby, it would be a fun line to play on,” Kane said.
According to the NHL, the All-Decade Team was chosen by a panel of NHL general managers, NHL hockey operations staff, NHL.com writers, and on-air talent from NBC, Sportsnet, and TVA Sports.
Ryan Zimmerman is returning for another year.
The Washington Nationals’ first baseman agreed to a one-year, $2 million deal. The contract has performance bonuses that could make it worth up to $5 million.
The news was first reported by the Washington Post’s Barry Svrluga.
John Carlson did not win the Hardest Shot Competition at the NHL’s All-Star Skills Competition but he came pretty dang close.
The Capitals defenseman, who won last year’s event with a 102.8 MPH shot, slapped the puck a career-high 104.5 MPH in his second attempt to briefly give him the lead in the event.
After Alex Ovechkin scored eight goals in three games last week, NHL.com’s Tom Gulitti spoke to Wayne Gretzky about how secure he believed his NHL goals record still was. Gretzky scored 894 goals in 1,487 career games. Ovechkin is now only 202 goals away from The Great One’s record in his age 34 season.
“I’m a big believer that records are made to be broken,” Gretzky said to NHL.com. “What I accomplished, I’m very proud of. It’s hard to do what I did, and it’s really hard to do what he’s doing now. But there’s no question in my mind that he has a real legitimate chance of doing it. The two things that you need; you’ve got to stay healthy, and he’s proven that over his career. He plays hard and he stays healthy. And, secondly, you’ve got to be on a good team — and he plays on a good team.”
Tomas Hertl had one of the most fun moments early in the NHL’s All-Star Skills Competition on Friday.
Hertl donned a Justin Bieber mask when he attempted to score on a breakaway attempt against St. Louis Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington.
First-line forwards, Alex Ovechkin and Tom Wilson, are vacationing together near Cancun, Mexico, and Friday their bye-week hangout went to another level. And by that, I mean the “Expert” level on Just Dance.
The Russian machine and the Tom Train took to the game room and danced their afternoon away with two tots from Ovechkin’s extended family.
