The "dreadful NHL All-Star Game might become even worse when it takes place in Nashville on Jan. 31" as a result of the new format, according to Fluto Shinzawa of the BOSTON GLOBE. Each of the three 3-on-3 games "will be 20 minutes," which is a "very long time to watch uninterested players dog it up and down the ice." The $1M bonus for the winning team is "a good carrot," but it is "not enough to make the All-Star Game look like hockey." Shinzawa: "The only way the All-Star Game changes for the better -- and by that, I mean scrubbed -- is for fans to stop paying big money to attend and change the channel" (BOSTON GLOBE, 11/22). In N.Y., Larry Brooks wrote 3-on-3 hockey "played at half-speed will become more of a fiasco than the cavalcade of recent All-Star Games that managed to throw the event into disrepute." The games "didn’t suffer" because they were 5-on-5, but rather because "somewhere along the line the players decided not to care and not to try." They "played half-speed at best, and with an overriding disdain for the integrity of the product." Honestly, it is as if the NHL and NHLPA "got together and decided to do something so garishly off the wall that people would be blinded into thinking that it makes some sort of sense" (N.Y. POST, 11/22). Penguins C Sidney Crosby said that the new format "will be fine." He said, "Why not? You can tell there's not a ton of intensity. You wouldn't really expect there to be in an All-Star Game. … Something to switch it up is probably not a bad idea" (PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW, 11/21).
BYE, BYE, BYE: Crosby said of the NHL instituting bye weeks for each team next season, "I like that a lot. I think for every team, to know you're going to get (a week off), is a nice luxury to have" (PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW, 11/21). In Pittsburgh, Rorabaugh & Menendez reported the NHLPA requested the league "give teams a five-day 'bye week'" in the '16-17 season. NHL teams "would have at least five days without games, and players would be excused from all team activities such as practices on that break." Penguins C Nick Bonino, who serves as the team's NHLPA rep, said, "You see football, they have a bye week and they can kind of recover. We play a lot of games. Sometimes coming right in before the All-Star break, teams will get games right before then right after. I think some teams will get seven days. I think they just wanted to make a level playing field with rest there." Regarding the status of the bye-week plan, Bonino said, "I don’t know if it’s been fully accepted yet. I know it’s in talks with the league, but all of it’s on a one-year basis. So, it’s kind of a trial period to see how the All-Star Game goes, see how the bye week goes. If we do it, then we can negotiate from there" (PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, 11/21).
QUARTERLY REPORT: The POST's Brooks reported NHLPA Exec Dir Donald Fehr has "informed players during his fall tour that escrow is expected to remain" at 16% for the season’s second quarter, "barring a sudden decrease in the Canadian dollar" (N.Y. POST, 11/22).
