On January 13th, the KHL will host their fifth annual All-Star game at Cheylabinsk’s Traktor Sport Palace and two Washington Capitals players (that we wish were in DC right now) have been voted into the starting line-up by fans: Team West’s Alex Ovechkin and Team East’s Evgeny Kuznetsov. The exhibition, which is set to be played in Kuznetov’s hometown, will mark the first time that the Caps legend and his protégé have suited up against one another — well, that is if the NHL lockout rages on for another month. And if there’s a just and loving God, it won’t!

Despite enduring a prolonged slump for the past five weeks, Kuznetsov was emphatically voted in as a starter for the second straight year and nearly eclipsed the Russian machine in votes: Ovechkin recieved 31,935 votes while Kuzya got 30,248. Meanwhile, Evgeny Malkin was the only player to eclipse the 40 thousand mark, garnering a league-high 40,569 votes. I guess Biznasty’s PR campaign on his behalf worked.

Two former Capitals were also voted in as starters. Semyon Varlamov will man the pipes for Team West, while Sergei Gonchar was named to Team East’s first defensive pairing. Nicklas Backstrom, somehow, was not among the top ten leading forwards of Team West. Though I’m going to blame stupid Dynamo Minsk fans who got their entire team’s first line in the top ten of voting: Tim Stapleton, Joe Pavelski, and Teemu Laine.

Meanwhile, the next stage of the selection process involves Russian journalists, who will select each team’s second lines. That voting will go on from December 17-21. Then on Christmas Eve, the KHL will reveal the full rosters.

Below, I’ve included the graphics for the starters of Team East and Team West and the full voting results via khlallstar.com .

Starters

Team East Starters: Datsyuk, Ovechkin, Kovalchuk, Chara, Ryazantsev, and Varlamov. Team West Starters: Malkin, Kuznetsov, Kostitsyn, Nikulin, Gonchar, and Garnett

Vote Totals

Not Alex Ovechkin. (Pic via capitals.com)

For those of you who like the All-Star Game, good news: this game was just as loose and ridiculous as you could have possibly dreamed. For those of you who dislike the All-Star Game, good news: it’s over.

We return to real hockey on Tuesday and thank goodness for that, but it was a nice weekend of rest for most of our team, and a nice weekend of dumb, mindless spectacle for hockey fans. I expect to see the rest of the Caps come back with suntans, and Dennis Wideman to come back with a smile on his face. As silly as most of the actual events of the weekend are, recognition is and always will be one of the best feelings in the world, especially for a guy like Wideman that rarely gets what he deserves.

It’s still official Dennis Wideman Day for the rest of Sunday, and then after that you can go back to your regularly scheduled Caps fandom.

Best Moments

• Remember that time that Henrik Lundqvist said that Marian Gaborik couldn’t score on him? Gaborik should have made him bet on it. He had two goals against his teammate, and on the first one he went down into Artem Anisimov’s “shotgun” goal celebration. Luckily John Tortorella appeared to think this was very funny. Either that, or that was his crazy laugh.
• Dennis Wideman was paired with Dion Phaneuf today…in a game where players don’t hit, which basically negates any value that being paired with Dion Phaneuf could have had. Sorry, Dennis.
• A good moment to ask Alfredsson for an in-depth retrospective on his career is definitely when he is on the ice in the middle of a hockey game.
• Due to overwhelming demand, Drake performed at intermission. We were in tears. He is truly this generation’s Shakespeare.
• Tim Peel was a referee for the game, and had to be told several times to stop trying to call diving on Alex Semin.
• Gaborik scored three goals for a hat trick, but no hats were forthcoming. One guy tried to throw a hat on the ice–a referee threw it back. Buzzkill.
• Hartnell after he scored: “Woo! The Sedin triplets!”
• The Kessel-Lupul line scored twice. The Ottawa crowd was quick to celebrate their careers and accomplishments in a game that crosses all team lines. Also tonight in almost-irony: Tyler Seguin was the other player on their line.
• Hometown hero Daniel Alfredsson scored twice in the second period, and the crowd tried to blow the speakers out with the “Alfie” chants. Great moment.
• Scott Hartnell kept tempting us with baby checks–the broadcast team classified them as “bumps”. We just want somebody to flat-out check somebody else. Just one time. Ryan Suter on this: “Someone’s going to have to settle him down. He’s running around there hitting guys.” The horror!
• Steven Stamkos stopped a puck with his stick from the bench so that Dan Girardi didn’t have to chase it down for icing. That’s so illeg–ahhhh, it’s the All-Star Game.
• Awkward Kessel of the night. “Phil, you look good out there, your legs look like they’re moving better than last night!” “Oh, I don’t know about that. I feel awful.”
• The broadcast team recklessly encouraged Claude Giroux to trip Scott Hartnell, who not only immediately took their suggestion but also tried to get other players in on it as well. #pushHartnelldown

Priceisms

Pic: Fred Chartrand

• “Carey, did you get a piece of that?” “Nope. I’ll say I did though.”
• To the ref, when he covered the puck: “Don’t blow that whistle, I want this thing to run out here!”
• On his goalposts stopping pucks: “These guys are awesome tonight. They’ve been excellent all year.” “Did you kiss your posts like Patrick Roy?” “No but I gave them a pretty good love tap here. They were awesome in that sequence.”
• On his teammates: “These guys are playing hard for me right now! I might have to buy them a dinner afterward!” This is apparently very new for Carey Price.
• “Oh, here we go,” I have deciphered, is Price-speak for “please shut up real quick, people are trying to score on me.”

Results

• Winner: Team Chara, 12-9. I can see why the NHL wants higher-scoring games. This was so thrilling and suspenseful.
• Goal Scorers: Gaborik (3), Malkin, Spezza, H. Sedin, Tavares, Lupul (2), Pominville, Alfredsson (2), Kane, Kessel, Iginla, Giroux, Hossa, Chara, Perry, D. Sedin.
• Game MVP: Marian Gaborik
• Wideman ended the night with 20:27 of ice time, a -2, and one assist.
• If you are looking for an extensive gallery of artistic crotch shots, Getty Images has got you covered. This is what the spirit of the All-Star Game is really all about.

And we’ll leave you with this. (Pic: Gregory Shamus)

Tonight was the gimmick to end all gimmicks, this was the real pony show. I know there are those of you who think the Skills Event is completely stupid and contrived, but let’s face it, if you got together a bunch of young hockey players, gave them a lot of alcohol, and just left them to their own devices, you’d probably get about the same result anyway.

I think we can all agree that this is probably not the kind of event that’s tailored to Dennis Wideman’s particular skillset. I’m not sure what kind of competition they could have held that would have been perfect for him, in fact–Best Replacement Mike Green? Grossest Lower Body Injury (Grossest Upper Body Injury of course is currently held by Matt Hendricks).

I won’t call attention to a certain Youtube blooper, but I’m just glad that he chose not to do trick shots. I would hate for him to have to relive traumatic memories. Instead, Wideman was entered in the Hardest Shot and the Challenge Relay portions of the competition, though entering the Hardest Shot competition for Zdeno Chara’s team is kind of like being the other US swimmer in the lane next to Michael Phelps. I have to end the affectionate ribbing by reiterating that I love Dennis Wideman. He’s fourth overall in points for defenseman. He deserves to be where he is, and it was fun to watch the huge smile on his face the whole time.

Results

Best Moments

• Dennis Wideman was second onto the ice. His intro? “He learned his hockey in Ontario and finds himself in his first-ever All-Star Game!” Now there’s a sparkling recommendation.
• I was carefully monitoring the loudest cheers by very scientific metrics–Sens excluded, of course. Now if you’re a real star, you should probably have a lot of people who hate you, but Jarome Iginla is immune to that rule. He ran away with it. There were also a lot of cheers for Shea Weber, because every single team has a crush on his free agency right now.
• Mike Gartner reference! The broadcast team was mentioning that he used to absolutely own the Fastest Skater competition. Also that he was born in Ottawa. Are you sensing a theme?
• Dennis Wideman held up his end in the Challenge Relay, nailing half his one-timer attempts and passing the baton along. Yep. That’s Dennis Wideman all right. In the Hardest Shot competition, he registered a 94.6 and a 95.3.
• The Breakaway Challenge started out pretty awkwardly, with the first four skaters totally screwing up their shots and about half of them taking it way too seriously. Breaking: a lot of hockey players have no sense of showmanship whatsoever. Alex Ovechkin was missed. In fact, the broadcast team called it the “Alex Ovechkin Event” twice, and mentioned him five other times during the event, unprompted.


(Photo credit: Christian Petersen)

• Patrick Kane won by putting on prop clothes and skating in like a goofball. Where could he possibly have gotten the inspiration for this? Mostly this event was a nice reminder that there is only one Alex Ovechkin in the entire world. Everyone else is playing for second place.
• Zdeno Chara set a new Hardest Shot record at 108.8 MPH. Somewhere, Ryan Callahan just winced.

via price-tastic31.tumblr.com

Hockey Night in Canada made an unexpectedly brilliant decision by mic’ing up Carey Price for the night, who didn’t seem bothered by this at all and kept the funny, frank commentary coming even while players were actually skating towards him. I know the Habs suck and all, but anyone who makes the ASG more fun to watch gets a weekend pass, so here are the best Priceisms from the night:

• Asked if he was actually going to try to makes saves: “Oh shoot, no! I hope he scores. You’ll never hear me say that again.”
• Price after flopping to stop the puck: “I think I got a concussion on that play!”
• Price on Elliott actually making an NHL save: “What is he doing? You can’t do that!”
• After chatting with the commentators about trying to turn backwards and stop the puck by looking the reflection on the glass, he proceeded to actually…do that–and make the save no less. He’s well on his way to inventing a new event: Trick Goaltending.
• Price on the next players to skate after the goaltender’s heat in the Fastest Skater event: “Now that’s effort right there. You don’t see goalies put in effort like that.” He then pointed out the unfairness of the right turn for one player and was quickly hushed by the broadcast team.
• Coming back to the net for the Elimination Shootout: “My groin is pretty tight. But this is the adversity we gotta deal with.”

It is finally not treason to post Joey the Junior Reporter, as he was at the event in a league-wide capacity instead of just reporting for the Hawks. So please, enjoy the bejeezes out of this clip, and I’ll see you here tomorrow for the silliest and most ridiculous part of the All-Star Weekend–the actual All-Star Game.