With Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game and Home Run Derby having just passed, I couldn’t help but realize how the All-Star Game seems to mean so much more to players in the MLB than it does to players in the National Hockey League.
Home Run Derby champ Yoenis Cespedes called the All-Star Game and Home Run Derby “the best part of the season,” and in the weeks leading up to the break numerous MLB teams canvassed for their prospective all-stars as the final vote date approached, such as the Toronto Blue Jays #RasieTheBar campaign that resulted in 30-year-old Steve Delabar making his first All-Star Game appearance, where he struck out Buster Posey to end the seventh inning.
It just doesn’t seem to be the same with hockey. Maybe it’s just me, but 13-time all-stars seem bored in the NHL All-Star Game, and discuss their being named to the list of the league’s most talented players as though the prospect of a week off has been thwarted, because now they have to endure the media and fan frenzy that is the All-Star Game and Skills Competition rather than spending it at home.
In last week’s MLB All-Star Game, New York Yankees closing pitcher Mariano Rivera made his 13th, and final, All-Star Game appearance. When he walked out of the bullpen to Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ in the bottom of the eighth inning, it gave me goose bumps. In his post-game interview, Rivera was elated to be able to have shared such a moment with the best that baseball has to offer, even for a 13th time.
The game itself was not an explosive display of offense (that’s what the Derby is for) or defense, and it may not have wowed fans from start to finish, but you could tell the players loved every minute of it, and that’s a big part of why I enjoy watching these games.
The way I see it, there could be a few mitigating factors. First, the risk of injury in a game of hockey is much greater than in baseball, however this argument was weakened when Robinson Cano took a fastball off the knee in the second pitch of last Tuesday’s game.
Another factor would be that the MLB All-Star Game ‘means something’ in the sense that the winning side earns home field advantage in the World Series Finals, but even that doesn’t strike me as enough to drive up the enthusiasm in players, as I’m sure a number of them walked onto Citi Field in New York last Tuesday knowing their chances of seeing the World Series Finals is closer to zero than Max Scherzer’s loss column.
My solution to the NHL is to scrap this outdoor Stadium Series and Winter Classic nonsense, and merge it with the All-Star Game.
The NHL ASG means nothing, and the Winter Classic shouldn’t be considered a regular season game, so it seems like a no brainer to merge the two (aside from the obvious fact that outdoor games are a massive cash grab for the league). I say the league should embrace the fact that this game, one time each year, means nothing on that standings board, and is meant to celebrate the heritage of the game with the best players the world has to offer.
Whatever the reason, the MLB has it right. From watching the giddy reaction of David Ortiz when Cespedes pounded a ball to the third deck of the stands at Citi Field, to Rivera’s gripping pre-game speech to the American League’s best players, it’s clear that this is something ball players dream of experiencing, whether they’re a five-year-old kid hitting off a tee, or a 43-year-old legend in his last season as a professional.
It’s a feeling I don’t get when I tune into the NHL All-Star Game, but I feel I would if the NHL gave it’s players a better reason to have fun with it.
The Winter Classic is, in theory, supposed to be fun for the players (or at least that’s a big reason why it initially appealed to me), but they can’t goof around on the snowy ice because the points matter in the standings, which leads to something like a wildly bouncing puck being a huge source of frustration, where if the game didn’t mean anything, it would likely be a source of laughs.
By merging the two ideas, the NHL would be making players earn a spot in the Winter Classic, rather than just lucking out. As it is right now, you have Ty Conklin, who has been in a Heritage Classic and two Winter Classics, and zero All-Star Games, and then you have Teemu Selanne, who has been in 10 All-Star Games (which would be 11 had he not waived his invitation in 2012 for teammate Corey Perry) and zero Winter Classics.
The NHL should make its players earn their chance at an outdoor game, and when they do, reward them by letting them go out there in front of five times as many fans as they’ll ever see at an indoor arena and have fun like they’re kids on a pond.
