New NHL All-Star Thursday to feature player draft, PWHL 3-on-3

The player draft will return to NHL All-Star Weekend this season as part of a new event: NHL All-Star Thursday.

Celebrities will be paired with captains, who will pick the teams for the NHL All-Star Game from a pool of players selected by the NHL and the fans.

The NHL Alumni Association will announce its Man of the Year in a tribute to the 1967 Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto’s last Stanley Cup team. The Professional Women’s Hockey League will play a 3-on-3 game.

NHL All-Star Thursday will be held at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto at 6 p.m. ET on Feb. 1, followed by the NHL All-Star Skills presented by DraftKings Sportsbook on Feb. 2 and the Rogers NHL All-Star Game on Feb. 3 in the 2024 NHL All-Star Weekend.

Tickets for NHL All-Star Thursday will go on sale to the public at 10 a.m. ET on Dec. 5 via Ticketmaster. In Canada, the event will be televised on Sportsnet. In the United States, the player draft will be on ESPN, the rest on ESPN+.

“We’ve decided to add a third night to an already vibrant weekend,” NHL chief content officer Steve Mayer said. “We felt like this was a year to make some changes, and Thursday night is one of many other changes that you’re going to hear about in the coming weeks.”

The NHL All-Star Game has had several different formats over the years. Captains have picked the teams three times before: at Carolina in 2011, Ottawa in 2012 and Columbus in 2015.

“We felt like that was something that was a really fun piece in past years,” Mayer said. “We started to hear our fans, our players, ask, ‘What about the draft?’ And we’ve seen some other leagues doing after we did it first, and we were like, ‘You know what? I think it’s time for us to bring it back.’”

The NHL will select 32 players for the NHL All-Star Game, one from each team. The NHL All-Star Fan Vote will return in January, enabling the fans to select 12 players to complete the rosters.

The League will select captains from the pool of 44 players and pair them with celebrities for the Tim Hortons NHL All-Star Player Draft, and the captains will pick the four teams for the 3-on-3 tournament from the remaining pool of players.

“Not to give too much away, but our players will be in street clothes and skates,” Mayer said. “They’re not going to be wearing uniforms. They’ll be dressed up. But we’re going to have them put their skates on, and when they get picked, they’ll skate over to their new team. So that’s going to be fun.”

The NHL has something humorous planned for the last four picks. The League has been working together with the NHL Players’ Association.

“In order to make this work, we needed the players’ buy-in, and the NHLPA has been incredible to work with,” Mayer said. “And that’s the truth. They’ve been really great. … They are leaning into events like this draft. They, like we do, see the value of exposing the players, having fun with the players.”

Mayer said the player draft was the main impetus to add a night to All-Star Weekend, but then the NHL thought of what it could do with the NHL Alumni and the PWHL.

The NHL Alumni present the Keith Magnuson Man of the Year award annually to the former NHL player who has applied the intangibles of perseverance, commitment and teamwork developed through the game into a successful post-career transition. This time, they will do it in a ceremony called the NHL Alumni Man of the Year, Honoring the ’67 Maple Leafs.

The PWHL formed this year as the top women’s pro league in the world and will begin its inaugural season in January with teams in Boston, Minnesota, Montreal, New York, Ottawa and Toronto. A group of elite players will perform in the Canadian Tire PWHL 3-on-3 Showcase.

“One thing led to the next thing, which led to the next thing, and suddenly we looked at an incredible lineup of events,” Mayer said. “There’s something for everyone. Our players will be involved. The new women’s league’s great players will be involved and then our alumni. And in Toronto, there are no more popular players than the ’67 Leafs.

“So, I think, in the end, this is going to be just an incredible night, a memorable night, and something that we think could be here to stay as part of our All-Star Weekend.”

The NHL All-Star Game is returning to its roots. Maple Leaf Gardens hosted an all-star game in 1934 as a benefit for Maple Leafs forward Ace Bailey after an injury ended his career. The first official NHL All-Star Game was held there in 1947.

This will be the ninth NHL All-Star Game in Toronto but the first since 2000.

“I’m happy for the city of Toronto to be able to host,” Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan said. “We want everyone to be our guest, and we want everyone to feel very connected to the sport of hockey, which is really important to the people here.”