Bet On NHL – New Format Brings Excitement To NHL All-Star Weekend
When the National Hockey League announced that they would use a new format for this weekend’s All-Star game, there were some critics that questioned how the new game would work. However, with the annual showdown set for this weekend, the excitement is building as the league moves in the right sports betting bonus direction as far as generating interest in the product.
NHL All-Star Game – Team Lidstrom vs. Team Staal
Sunday January 30, 2011 – 4:00 PM ET
NHL All-Star weekend will feature a handful of key events that will highlight the festivities. The action will get underway on Friday with the Fantasy Draft selection, a key new concept that the league is expecting will bring more interest to the weekend overall. Rather than the teams being divided by nationalities or conference, the league will allow for an old-school approach to the selection of the teams, with two captains selecting the players that they will skate alongside. The captains will be Nik Lidstrom of the Detroit Red Wings, and Eric Staal of the host Carolina Hurricanes. The process of selection will be similar to a road hockey game, where the two leaders line up and select who they want on their team.
Once the team’s are selected, the NHL Skill Competition will be the main event from Saturday. The two sides will clash in a battle of different elements of the game, including everything from shooting, to scoring, to the breakaway and target practice in a contest to decide which team has the better overall skill in the specific areas. Always an exciting event, some online sports betting fans have voiced that this is the real spectacle to watch on the weekend, taking precedence over the actual All-Star game.
That game doesn’t go until Sunday afternoon, and since the NFL has a week off before its Super Bowl betting game, the only football being played that day is the Pro Bowl. That means that there is a greater chance for viewers to tune in as Team Lidstrom takes on Team Staal in the main event of the weekend. While everything to do with the actual game and festivities has gone according to plan, some key injuries will prevent at least a couple of notable names from participating in the event, and that has some from the league annoyed that the product won’t be complete.
Pittsburgh Penguins’ captain Sidney Crosby and winger Evgeni Malkin will both not participate in the NHL All-Star game, as both are recovering from nagging injuries. Despite playing on the same team, Crosby and Malkin are two of the biggest superstars that were expected to be at the event, and the fact that they won’t be will be a tough pill to swallow for the league. Crosby was the leading vote-getter for the event with 635, 509, while Malkin was another of the six players that were elected to the game by the fans after he totaled 376, 887 votes.
