John Tortorella Hates The Shit Out Of The All-Star Game. Who Could Have Possibly Seen That Coming?
Just once I would love for John Tortorella to break character. He's such a grumpy old hockey man that it would be hilarious to hear him come out one day and hit us with a curveball like, "you know what? The All-Star Game is fun as hell and I think it's a wonderful way to try to grow the game and celebrate the overabundance of skill we have in this league". He doesn't even have to mean it. It would just be nice if he could keep us on our toes sometimes and not be so predictable with every answer.
Don't get me wrong. I don't totally disagree with the guy. I'd say the word I'd use for the All-Star game would be indifference. If I don't have anything else going on and have some time to throw it on, I'll watch the games and I'll enjoy them for sure. But I'm not going to go out of my way and cancel plans just to make sure I can watch the ASG. That didn't used to be the case. I could probably go to my parents house right now and find every All-Star game from '94 to 2002 on VHS. But like every other major sports league, the fact that you can watch pretty much every highlight every night on social media has eliminated the need for an All-Star game.
But it would still be funny if the grumpiest bastard in all of hockey decided to come out and become the biggest advocate for what has essentially just become a circus show money grab for the league. However, this moment is really cool for Kevin Hayes so I'm pretty pumped he gets a chance to head to the ASG this year.
Hate the All-Star game as much as you want, but you can't hate that.
And while I don't totally disagree with Torts when it comes to the All-Star game, I VIOLENTLY disagree with this bastard deciding to go out and have the Flyers winning 4 straight games to start the new calendar year. I mean what the fuck are we doing here, people? The Flyers are not even close to a playoff team. We just got done watching Connor Bedard have one of the greatest all-time performances at a World Juniors. If ever there were a year to fully embrace the suck and go all in on a tank, it's right now. And instead of digging themselves closer to the basement of the league, the Flyers are doing shit like this right now.
They're going to end up with the 8th overall pick. No Bedard. No Michkov. No Fantilli. No Leo Carlsson. No Dalibor Dvorsky. No Will Smith. They'll grab some kid who will play maybe 120 total games for the Flyers in his career. All because they decided to randomly got hot in January. Goddammit.
Sidenote: I'm not going to write a whole blog on this, but since we're talking about the All-Star selections….
Awesome job by the Ducks to get Troy Aikman to deliver the news. And I'm also not sure if Troy Terry has realized yet that was a recording and not a live video. "Is he talking to me?"