No Skills Required

How a league can stay financially afloat after making an impressive number of horrible decisions is beyond Stephen Hawking's comprehension, let alone mine.

Someone needs to change me. I just made
a Bettman in my pants.

The NHL's All-Star skills competition was the lone demonstration of a league's elite skills that was worth investing a night watching since ESPN put the homerun derby on HGH. Bettman's latest attempt to draw American interest in the game from up North was on display tonight; a not so clever revamping of the NHL All-Star skills competition.

Bettman make me much money. To thank him,
he asked me to stick this thumb up his five hole

The new team relay/obstacle course had promise, but VS. had no clue how to capture the chaos on video. It left even the strongest of hockey fans wondering what was going on. I'm sure the on-ice camera was meant to illustrate how fast and difficult the game was, instead it made everyone motion sick and showed how form fitting the new RBK jerseys are.

Crap! even soccer knows how to make the
follow the action camera angle work

The fastest skater competition didn't need revamping, so Bettman changed it and no one, included the announcers knew what was going on. The old method showed just how fast a player could get up to speed, negotiate turns, and carry speed. The new method was just one loud announcer and some rednecks away from being a tractor pull.

What was I thinking. The game is in Atlanta,
there had to be rednecks around.

In the land of the one man (Domique Wilkins) who could beat Michael Jordan in a dunk contest, Bettman introduced the judged breakaway contest. This had disaster written all over it when TSN announced it months ago. Even so, it still found a way to disappoint. The players showed nothing we hadn't seen before.

If only NHL mascots or ice girls were invited to participate

Ovechkin brought the only highlight of the contest as he attempted to Mark McGwire a puck into the net. After two whiffs the Pirates called Ted Leonis and offered Canadian Jason Bay straight up for Ovechkin, but Washington had to pick up some of the contract or take Matt Morris too. The mighty Midget St. Louis had two tricks up his sleeve but Evgeni Nabokov thought the objective of the contest was to showcase him and poke checked away the attempts. Ryan Getzlaf, a not so mighty Duck, perfectly captured the ineptitude of the contest. He made it to the finals against Ovechkin and in his last attempt made no move and simply shot the puck. When asked why he did that, he gave a simple answer any hockey player would understand, he just wanted to score.

He missed the concept by THIS much

On this night Bettman did anything but score. Another NHL change, another NHL mistake.