In the third annual BEARD Hockey All-Star Game, the Eastern Conference finally gets their due after a 15-round shootout and lots of action.
BIG THANKS to Arizona's Brandon Streblow for the following writeup!
---
Boy oh boy, was it an epic goal-scoring night to remember in our annual BEARD All-Star game! This game had it all…except defense, but what can you do.
Let’s hit some of the highlights shall we?
A game of comebacks
The East started on fire, outshooting the West in period one by 16 shots, and consequently outscored them 8-2, including a goal just nine seconds into the game.
The West rallied from there, however, and doubled the East in the remaining two periods, including eight in a row at one point! The East actually found themselves down by three with just eight minutes to go, but managed to rally back and tie it up and send it to overtime.
Longest shootout ever!
Somehow, neither team scored in OT, so we went to a shootout. To say the goalies didn’t try would be an understatement, as we saw 29 straight shootout goals before Ilya Sorokin finally stopped the West to win the game!
Loads of offense
As mentioned above, we had 28 total regulation goals in this one, including a whopping four hat-tricks from: Matt Duchene, Aleksander Barkov, Mr. Bad-Stache, and Roman Josi. Plus, every single line player scored at least one point.
Star controversy?
The game’s 3 stars were Duchene, Josi, and Barkov, but these decisions were not met without gripes.
Josi had a game-high 11 shots, plus had a hat trick, an assist, AND a game high 29+ mins of ice time. Duchene and Barkov just had the hatties. Josi’s fellow Avalanche players took to social media shortly after to voice their displeasure at Josi not getting 1st star.
There were goalies playing??
Six different people played goalie and one of them, Tristan Jarry, barely cracked a .900 SV%. Igor Shesterkin, meanwhile, gave up eight goals on 34 shots, so he certainly earned the L in this game.
Hilariously, goalies were also responsible for the only penalties of the game, with Sergei Bobrovsky drawing a delay of game and Sorokin drawing TWO of the same! Put me in coach!
Eastern All-Stars = wimps?
A small segment of social media took the East to task despite the win shortly after the game, as the stats will show they only landed two hits the entire game!
One crumudgeonly user was quoted as saying, “I watch this sport to see people clean each other’s clocks, not this ‘skill-based’ nonsense. Back in my day these guys would’ve put effort into it, even during the All Star game.”
Kirill Kaprizov, one of the game’s rising young stars, responded, “We still won old man lol”.
You tell ‘em, Kirill.
MVP of the Night: Matt Duchene (LAK)
Runner-up: Roman Josi (COL)
Honorable Mention: Aleksander Barkov (PIT)