Nine stars of one year – Newspaper Kommersant No. 21 (7466) dated 02/06/2023

The NHL Star Weekend, which ended in Florida, emphasized the huge “specific weight” in the league of Russian hockey players. The All-Star Game, an event that, due to its current format, is more correctly translated not as a “Match”, but as an “All-Star Game”, was attended by a record number of Russians – nine. Two of them – Nikita Kucherov and Andrey Vasilevsky – became the winners of the mini-tournament of combined divisions, and Alexander Ovechkin was again in the spotlight thanks to the participation of the legend’s little son in the shootout competition.

A stellar weekend is, first of all, a “fun” in the middle of the season, a chance to reboot and recharge players and fans tired of the tense routine of the regular season. But this weekend, which took place on the site of the Florida Panthers club, could lead to some serious thoughts. Well, for example, to the idea of ​​the importance for the NHL of its “Russian component”.

The All-Star Games, which bring together the brightest, most beloved hockey players, are a good opportunity to evaluate it. The minimal, symbolic Russian presence in these meetings was rare, but the record was held for a very, very long time.

In 1998, eight Russians played in the All-Star Game, in which the teams of North America and Europe then met. Since then, it was not possible to break the record until the year 2023 came.

In Florida, nine Russian players took to the ice at once – goalkeepers Igor Shesterkin (New York Rangers), Ilya Sorokin (New York Islanders) and Andrey Vasilevsky (Tampa Bay Lightning), forwards Alexander Ovechkin (Washington Capitals), Artemy Panarin (Rangers), Nikita Kucherov (Tampa), Vladimir Tarasenko (St. Louis Blues), Kirill Kaprizov (Minnesota Wild) and Andrey Svechnikov (Carolina Hurricanes).

An important nuance: it is not always the best of the best who come to the All-Star Games. The task of the NHL is to ensure that they – for the sake of spectator interest – have the maximum club coverage, maybe sometimes sacrificing some celebrities if some of its partners have already got into the application. This time the goal was achieved in the following way. The All-Star Game was actually a three-match mini-tournament between four league divisions—two semi-finals and a final. Hockey is not classic, but the one that is used in the regular season in overtime – “three by three”. At the same time, most of the participants – 32 – were determined by the NHL itself, which selected a player from each league team. A dozen more were added by audience voting.

So, among the nine athletes from Russia (and this, by the way, is one fifth of the tournament’s composition), there was no one about whom one could say that he deserved his status only thanks to either the regulations, or, let’s say, exclusively the former, and not actual merits, former flair.

Shesterkin and Vasilevsky are the frontmen of the NHL goalie department of the past five years, Sorokin looks like a real contender for the title of the strongest goalkeeper in the current championship. Kucherov, Panarin and Kaprizov are the leaders of their clubs with amazing statistics, Svechnikov and Tarasenko are among the leaders. With Ovechkin, everything is quite simple: a legend who plays at 37 as well as at 27. It was about him that they wrote and talked more during the weekend than about the rest.

Alexander Ovechkin did not have a chance to play in the final of the tournament: the team of his Metropolitan division did not reach him. In the final match, the Atlantic Division team defeated the Central Division team – 7:5. And this means that Nikita Kucherov and Andrei Vasilevsky happened to be the winners (the MVP award, the most valuable player, went to their partner Matthew Tkachuk from Florida). But Ovechkin flashed to the final.

The organizers of the All-Star Game came up with a chic idea to combine in this show the Russian hockey giant with the Canadian giant – Sidney Crosby from Pittsburgh. Both debuted in the NHL at the same time, in 2005, both constantly competed with each other for the right to be considered the toughest of the tough. In Florida, Ovechkin and Crosby became partners, designing exquisite combinations on the ice, and in the show that preceded the tournament, they came up with a completely out of the ordinary trick.

The list of “warm-up” competitions also included the traditional shootout competition. Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby, two hockey idols, decided to play theirs together. Rather, at first everyone thought that the two of them. But then a third player appeared on the court, quite small. It turned out to be Ovechkin’s four-year-old son Sergei, who sent the puck into the net. The trick was win-win: all the judges gave the highest marks.

Alexey Dospekhov