Buffalo Sabres Fans: NHL All-Star Voting Now Open
Alright, Buffalo Sabres fans. The month of December is upon us, which means the NHL All-Star Game is only a short time away. In less than two months, some of the top players in the league will hit the ice in Nashville to take part in the annual competition – and voting is now open.
Who do you want to see in?
As of the time I’m writing this, Buffalo Sabres rookie Jack Eichel is among the top 20 players in voting and is considered “trending.”
We’ve already seen some examples of how flashy Eichel can be at the NHL level, as he pulls off one seemingly impossible move after another, weaving his way through the opposing players like it’s nothing…. so how cool would it be to give him a chance at the big stage come January?
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Of course, there are always those standby players that will seemingly always be voted into the NHL All-Star Game, simply because they’re “the” players.
Alexander Ovechkin leads voting at the present time. Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin are behind him, with Patrick Kane and Jaromir Jagr rounding out the top five slots.
The 2016 NHL All-Star Game will see a little different format than we’re used to; this season, it will be a 3-on-3 tournament, made up of four teams, one from each division. Fan votes will determine the captain of each team.
If voting were to close right now, Ovechkin would captain the Metropolitan team, while Benn would captain the Central squad. Jagr would be the captain of the Atlantic team, with Arizona Coyotes forward Max Domi as the top vote-getter in the Pacific Division and captain of that team.
Of course, it’s only day one, so it’s way too early to predict any of that, but as days go by, who will be the leaders? And what do you guys think of the new format overall?
Honestly, I can see it from two points of view. On one side, maybe the old format of the NHL All-Star Game was getting old and tired and, quite frankly, a little boring. Maybe it’s good that the league is shaking things up, trying something new and providing a different style of on-ice entertainment for the folks who will be there in Nasvville that last weekend in January.
But there will also always be the concern of injuries, which could be more prevalent in a 3-on-3 format. At what point is the “entertainment factor” simply not worth the risk?
And of course – it’s hard to post about the 2016 NHL All-Star Game without thinking about last year’s. Who can forget when Zemgus Girgensons, a still perhaps lesser-known player around the league, was voted into the All-Star Game starting lineup, thanks in large part to a group of fans from Latvia? Could we see something like that happen again?
Fans can now vote for the 2016 NHL All-Star Game on NHL.com here.
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Fans can vote up to 10 times per day for their favorite players to appear in the tournament in January.