All-Star Weekend Wrap-Up: What Worked and What Didn't?
Justice Beaver, Kucherov and the Fun Police, and a deep dive into Bernie being the best hockey-playing mascot.
Back at it again after a little more than a week away.
The Colorado Avalanche players — with the exception of Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Alexandar Georgiev — have been off since Jan. 26 following a 5-1 triumph over the visiting LA Kings and take on the Rangers tonight at MSG. Little did we know that in the week that followed that win against LA, former Avs’ blueliner and current Kings’ GM Rob Blake would make it the last game for his head coach Todd McLellan.
The Avs were playing so well heading into the break that were actually costing people their jobs.
A lot can happen in a week. And a lot has happened in a year’s time since the last NHL All-Star Weekend. Look, I didn’t hate that the NHL tried new things in Florida to make the weekend’s events different last Februrary. It was at least something unique and I applaud them for trying. It just was short on actual execution and with the event moving from city to city each year, you can’t have warm-weather events fall flat because you don’t have consecutive years to fix the problems and try again. Shooting down surfboards works on South Beach, but not in the Six.
So they asked the only person in the NHL who apparently knows what to do: enter Connor McDavid to fix the Skills Competition!
And as much as I want to hate how much the league seemingly only trusts McJesus to solve what ails them, I will say that this year was better. So let’s go through what worked and what didn’t work this weekend in Toronto.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Dater On Avalanche to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
 | A guest post by
|