NHL All Star Clash Needs New (Old) Format

After watching the NHL All Star game at Raleigh, North Carolina last week, I am still trying to figure out if I should have rooted for Team Lidstrom or Team Staal or who was on which team.  This is the most confused I have been watching hockey since the Campbells duked it out with the Wales back in the day.  (Fortunately, I wasn't around for the 1951 and 1952 affairs, which were touted as "First Team" vs "Second Team"!?)

This game has had a particularly tortured history.  The first one I ever saw on TV was in January 1967 when the defending Cup Champion Canadiens shut out the All Stars 3-0.   That format was OK, but hard to justify when the defending Champs are struggling the following year. 

The Habs, in fact, finished a poor second in 1967, 17 points shy of the first place Blackhawks, and were beaten by the Maple Leafs in the Finals).  After expansion, the league then went to an East vs West format, which then morphed into the forgettable Campbell-Wales concoction. Despite being a big hockey fan, the game never got my juices flowing.

I recall that, in 1979, the game was replaced by the Challenge Cup, a best of three affair between the NHL Stars and the Soviet Union, which was thrilling and memorable, if not as publicized as the never-to-be forgotten original 1972 Summit Series.  International hockey was kind of a new kid on the block at that time, as the NHL was still almost entirely Canadian. 

Still, Borje Salming was starring in Toronto and the WHA's Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson had come to the Rangers after lighting up the scoreboard as line mates of Bobby Hull in Winnipeg of the WHA, so a revolution was already in the works.

Once the NHL players joined the Olympic fun in 1998, the league finally hit upon a more marketable format for its big show:  North America vs the World.  (I never understood why the league used "the World", since all the players were from Europe and not from Asia, Africa, South America or Australia, but it was a step in the right direction...a kind of Olympic all-star match-up, complete with the drama of regular season teammates playing for opposing squads.)

It kept my interest for the five times it was played, from 1998 through 2002, before the league abandoned it for the more mundane East vs West match up.  Even that was bearable in comparison to the Staal-Lidstrom caper.  Hopefully, the NHL will eventually return to North America vs Europe and the national pride of many of the players will make the contest worth watching again.