First person: Not as easy as it might appear

Daniel Alfredsson and the rest of this year's NHL All-Stars face an improved skills competition Saturday.

That’s right. Brad Holland, an All-Star for a day.

Let me explain.

Thursday evening, I was part of a crew that put on a mock-up of the NHL Dodge SuperSkills competition. The mock-up, complete with a full complement of Senior High School All-Stars, would include everything the real event would entail from start to finish. I was slated to compete in the first: the obstacle course.

I dressed in the on-ice officials’ room and took the ice. After a quick stretch of muscles I haven’t used in months, I joined the other skaters circling the zone. Skating around, waiting for things to be set up, I managed to get in close with a couple of my fellow All-Stars, and noticed that each of them had a strip of tape across his helmet, with an NHL All-Star’s name written in big black, bold ink. Each had an alter-ego, a real life All-Star who he would portray in our crude dry run.

You had a pair of players in black jerseys acting as Pavel Datsyuk and Ryan Getzlaf. Here was Nick Lidstrom, there was Evgeni Nabokov. My favorite, however, was the 6-foot-8 defenseman who was, you guessed it, the Ducks’ Chris Pronger. “Prongs,” as we began calling him, would eventually compete in the first event as a one-timer specialist along with myself and two other skaters.

In fact, each of these kids would be competing in their NHL All-Star’s events and roles. When everything was set up, we skated over and jumped on the benches, one East bench, one West, and things began. It was a little surreal when our coach, the alter-ego for Mike Babcock, called out the competitors for the first event – “Prongs! Perry! Sedin! Legace!”

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And even more surreal when each of these mini-me’s stood and dutifully jumped over the boards and headed to center ice to be introduced over the loudspeaker to a splattering of applause from parents, refs, cameramen, and of course, the other All-Stars.

It was time for the first event. As he jumped over the boards, Henrik Sedin paused to ask “who’s first?” to which someone replied “you are.” He stopped dead in his tracks. “I am?” he said. “Yes,” the first one answered again. “Don’t screw up in front of all of these people.”

All of these people actually amounted to a handful of spectators, but it didn’t matter. The players were talking about each other. The last thing they wanted to do was mess up a stickhandling drill, or whiff a one-timer, or fall while skating; not in front of their teammates and competition – their friends. Their peers. Their co-workers.

The spectators almost weren’t there. It was pride in their abilities, in front of the other skaters that they were most concerned with. The first run-throughs of the events went off without a hitch, and the Western side was able to take the first event, and earn a point in the third, making it a 3-2 Eastern lead after the obstacle course was completed.

Finally, during the third run-through, it was my time to shine. The ref skated over and looked at me – older than these kids by almost a decade – and seemed to wonder not only what I was doing there, but what he was possibly going to say to me.

”Well,” he said. “Looks like you’re up.”

Heart hammering in my chest, I leapt over the boards and skated over to the refs to hear the description of events. I would stand and wait, wait for Rich Libero, our VP of editorial and production and my boss, to stickhandle through a very dicey course of 8-10 pucks set up beside the net. Then, on the refs’ call, I would “sauce” four pucks set up at my feet over a barricade and attempt to hit a two-foot wide mini-net on the other side of the ice. From there, one-timers were fed to, again, you guessed it – “Prongs”.

After Pronger’s one-timers, he would shuffle down to the dot and feed pucks to Legace, who would take long-bomb shots at the empty net at the other end of the ice. And all of this would have to go down in less than 45 seconds. So it meant we had to be quick.

Tweet!

And Rich was off! Almost … the puck got stuck (in a rut I imagine he’d tell you) and he had to swing back to pick it up. Then, he surprised the entire arena by wheeling his old-time defenseman’s hands deftly between six of the eight pucks before losing the handle and knocking the last two pucks out of line.

Tweet! The ref blew his whistle and then shouted: “You’re up!”

This was the moment I had been waiting for. All my dues, all my work, it had led to this moment. And … success! I sauced the first puck over the barrier – so smooth and flat you could’ve served a cup of Earl Grey tea on it – and watched it curve ever so beautifully into the mini-net. “I can do this, this is easy,” I thought. The next one, however, slid a little wide. Well, maybe a couple feet wide. No more than 10 feet wide anyway.

From there things fell progressively apart. My third shot wobbled and barely cleared the barrier, and wasn’t close to the net. My fourth, well – let’s not talk about my fourth. The best thing I can say about it was that it was high enough to clear the initial barrier, but that’s about it.

Pronger fired his one-timers and Legace hit one of four long-bomb shots to the far end, and just like that, with the buzzer that signified the end of the drill, my 45 seconds of fame were behind me.

Skating back to the bench, I realized that even though I didn’t skate with these kids on a regular basis, I felt like I owed them something and by sinking only one of four shots, I had someone how let them down. So it is with great pride that I am able to say that Ryan Getzlaf (who is on my NHL.com Fantasy Experts League) leaned over and said with a smile; “Nice work man, you almost got a couple more of those.”

I couldn’t help but feel a whole lot better. We tapped gloves, and I nestled into the bench and watched as they began to set up the fastest skater competition. And that was the end of my All-Star experience.

Looking back, my first and only All-Star appearance behind me, I know that I would have absolutely no chance at holding my own with the rest of the real All-Stars. None at all. The amount of skill involved in the SuperSkills competition is light years ahead of my own meager ability. And I’ll be nicely comfortable in my seat Saturday and Sunday nights, covering all the action when the real players go at it.