With that in mind, a lot of fans might expect you and Quinn to select as many of the Canucks' other All-Stars (Boeser, Demko, Pettersson and J.T. Miller) as you can in the player draft. Demko already told us that he hopes you pick him. Could we see a lot of Canucks on your team?
“If it was just Quinn and I, I think it would be a lot easier to answer that, but the truth is there are three of us. Jack is a big part of this, too, so I don't know if it's going to be that simple. What we want, what the fans want, what the players want, may be different things. I can tell you this: Quinn is such a good kid, and he's a great captain. Even just talking with him about it all, you see how much of a great leader he is. … I just want to say, if Jack and Quinn Hughes are playing together, is that fair already? You could put me on the line and they could just throw pucks off my [butt] into the net and it would probably still be good. I could just fumble around and stumble around and they could do everything. These guys are literally two of the most sensational players on the planet, so if Jack is playing too, scary 3-on-3 team.
“I love this look for the NHL. I like that there's an international side to each of us. I just finished touring 45 countries, and I'm probably more famous outside North America, and Will Arnett (who will be the celebrity captain for Team McDavid) is the same, and Tate McRae (the celebrity captain for Team MacKinnon) is the same, and she's just exploding. I actually just talked to her for the first time. I gave her a call just to tell her how excited I was to do this with her and how happy I was for her. And then of course, Justin (Bieber, the celebrity captain of Team Matthews), a big hockey fan, Toronto kid. There's a lot to love about this, and what I really like is it comes from such an organic place. It isn't forced and weird. You have genuine hockey fans who don't just love their team but love the game, and I think it's just so much fun. That's what it's supposed to be, and when you add in the reward for winning, it becomes competitive, and as a guy who doesn't always love All-Star activities in different sports because they can be meaningless, I love that there's a goal. I love that there's something to fight for, and it raises the stakes a whole [heck] of a lot and it makes it a lot more fun.
“I like the [2024 NHL All-Star Skills presented by DraftKings Sportsbook] competition part of it, too. I like how they're doing it, and I love the Bieber jerseys. I saw a bunch of complaining and I was like, 'No, you want this to be special and electric and weird.' I want one of those jerseys, and I want it signed by everybody and I want to hang it on my wall. It's unique and different.”
With so much on the line, have you given serious thought to roster construction?
“I'm telling you right now, Quinn and I have already had discussions about this, and I can't you tell you what we’re going to do, but I can tell you it isn't going to be willy-nilly. We've talked about it, and it's Jack, too. We want to have fun and make a great roster. … Fortunately, there is no bad pick. You could literally pick any one of these players and you're getting the best hockey player on the planet, so it's going to be interesting with chemistry and when certain guys are taken. To be really honest, when the draft is over, I think me or Quinn or Jack will be able to tell you what our plan was, but I don't think I can do that before.”
That just grows our anticipation for the draft.
“Like my manager says, no mystique is a big mistake.”
We’ve hinted a bit at your relationship with the Canucks, and you all live with the pressure of performing in public, although in very different spheres. What are those like?
“I don't think that we live in different worlds. Our job might be a very public job, but we're really just regular people in our lives. I don't think any of us have real celebrity lifestyles, and so we've become friends on a level of just there was a lot we had in common. I think we all understood it. (It's) a lot of pressure when you're doing your job in front of the public, but 10% of what we do happens either on a stage or on an ice rink and 90% is what happens off the ice or off the stage, and I think having that in common and sort of understanding that about each other made those sorts of friendships just a lot easier. And honestly, they're really beautiful guys. They're just easygoing guys and great guys, and I'm still friends with a guy like Troy Stecher (who played for Vancouver from 2016-20). ... I still cheer for him, and same as Zack MacEwen. There's a bunch of guys where I am fans of them, and I think it makes it even a little more enriching for me to become a fan of the game. I'm happy when they have success, and that's a very cool thing. It gives you such a broader spectrum and allows you to enjoy the game at such a deep level. And again, it's just a game, and these are human beings and there's a great satisfaction in knowing that your positive -- and this sounds so cliché -- but listen, to know that you can be a positive part of somebody's life, and they've been that for me, too. I've had either tough things or I've been down and certain guys have helped me to get up, and that's what friendship is about.”
One of those discussions with Canucks players was about whether or not you could score on Demko. He suggested that might be best saved for your basement rink, but is there any chance we might see it as part of the skills competition?
“I actually was talking to him and I was like: ‘Dude, it will never happen. Either you let me score and it looks bad for me, or I score on you, and it looks bad for you.’ There's no real win here, so I think we just need to keep this to us hanging out. And by the way, I was just shooting a movie in Seattle and I went to do some morning practice stuff, and I was shooting against the warm-up goalie for the Kraken, and I had like 12 or 15 breakaways and scored on none of them. So, my confidence in thinking that I could beat Thatcher has dramatically dropped.”
