We've officially reached All-Star season on the sports calendar. With the exception of Major League Baseball, which runs on its own cycle, the major four sports leagues will be honoring their best and brightest faces within the next month. First up, the NHL All-Star Game on Feb. 3 from Toronto, an exciting event one of hockey's hotbeds... that won't include its sixth or seventh leading scorers. Don't worry the guy, who's tied for 224th (and is a forward) had his ticket punched weeks ago.
Why aren't Artemi Panarin and Mikko Rantanen invited so that Tom Wilson can spend some time in his hometown? Well, the NHL is one of the leagues that requires every team to have an All-Star. So, Panarin is sitting at home because high-profile teammate Igor Shesterkin was needed to fill out the goaltending and Rantanen because fellow Colorado Avalanche Nathan MacKinnon is one of the six players with more points than him (Panarin is another).
This is especially important in a sport like hockey where there aren't a ton of individual awards. To understand why this is a problem, let's look at a player like Claude Giroux. Giroux led the NHL in scoring in the 2010s and went to a Stanley Cup Final with the Philadelphia Flyers. He had 7 seasons with at least 70 points during the 2010s, plus another in 2022-23. In 2017-18, he had 102 points, the second most in the league. But in terms of hardware, his trophy shelf is weirdly lacking. Giroux has never won an individual trophy, notching a pair of top-five MVP seasons. He was named to the second-team All-NHL team for that 102-point campaign. But other than digging into the stats, there is little way to quickly appreciate Giroux's excellence — other than looking at his six All-Star Game appearances as a Flyer.
So, it's important for the All-Star Game to matter. But it just can't if we're rewarding players for being on bad teams that just so happen to have no one better than them. There will always be snubs and misses. Moving over to baseball, two years ago, Bryce Harper won the NL MVP Award without being named an All-Star. That was understandable because Harper's honors were largely the product of a historic second-half — his resume when the actual ASG rolled around wasn't one of the top 30 or so in his sport.
A year later, Harper was an All-Star but he probably shouldn't have been. Harper was lighting it up in the first half, but a few weeks before the game, he suffered a broken hand that sidelined him for the contest. While you could at least make an argument for Harper making it because he hadn't been sidelined for that long in this case, it shows off another problem with All-Star Games — fan votes. Yes, they are great for generating engagement and publicity, so maybe getting rid of them is just wishful thinking. But just look at the NHL to see the problem. One All-Star for each team was named initially and then the rest of the spots were left up to a fan vote.
Of the 12 players elected, a jaw-dropping 8 of them played for Canadian teams, who are known for having the most boisterous fanbases in the sport. Only one skater, Colorado's Cale Makar, earned the fan vote for an American team. Again, this isn't to go after the fanbases of these teams. They just showed their support for their favorite players and followed the rules of the process. But for being an All-Star to matter, the market a player plays in should matter as little as possible. Big market stars are always going to get more attention. However, having the league or journalists decide the players at least interjects some objectivity and desire for making the right choices, not just the preferred ones. There's a reason fans don't get a Hart Trophy ballot.
Additionally, the current set-up takes away from the product that the fans in the arena get to see. This is Toronto's first NHL All-Star Game since 2000. The city last hosted the MLB All-Star Game in 1991 and the NBA All-Star Game in 2016. So this will be four all-star games for the city in 33 years, or about one every eight years. Some markets, especially smaller ones or ones that don't have a presence in all three sports leagues (the NFL Pro Bowl Games aren't hosted by a team) may be even less fortunate. Philadelphia hasn't hosted an All-Star Game in any sport since 2002 and won't until 2026. The NHL is offering All-Star Weekend ticket passes with four-digit prices.
The fans paying these big sums deserve to be treated to the best product. People in Toronto don't care about seeing the best player on the fledgling Columbus Blue Jackets or San Jose Sharks. There's no threat to attendance by excluding undeserving teams whatsoever. Viewership could suffer, but a greater percentage of fans of the best teams may tune in if more than just one player is selected. I could be talked into including a one-player minimum for the team hosting the ASG since that wouldn't have a massive effect on determining the rest of the field.
Yes, we would lose some great moments. Hockey fans everywhere relished in the story of John Scott, a career enforcer who out-of-nowhere won the fan vote for the 2016 All-Star Game and wound up being named the All-Star MVP. I'll admit, it would be a bummer if that didn't happen (ignoring the negative consequences the vote had on Scott's career leading up to the game itself). But all-star games are supposed to be about celebrating greatness. No longer is the All-Star Game one of the only opportunities fans have to see players on other teams the way it was before network television became anywhere close to what it is today. It's time for professional sports leagues to start acting accordingly.
The views expressed in this Sports Authority are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Observer.
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