Tampa Bay’s Victor Hedman won the Hardest Shot competition and St. Louis’s Jordan Kyrou was the fastest skater during an NHL All-Star skills competition with a distinct Las Vegas flavor on Friday night.
Sebastian Aho from Carolina won the Accuracy Shooting contest at T-Mobile Arena on a night where the Sin City sets and spectacle left the biggest impressions.
Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, right, and Calorina Hurricanes’ Sebastian Aho participate in the Skills Competition’s save streaks event, part of NHL All-Star weekend, on Friday, February 4, 2022 in Las Vegas.
(AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
Zach Werenski of Columbus won the Fountain Face-Off, in which the All-Stars stood on a floating platform in the middle of the famous fountains at the Bellagio casino on the Strip and fired illuminated pucks at a series of targets around them.
Then several more All-Stars played a game called 21 on ’22, in which they shot a 35-foot outside wall of oversized cards in a version of blackjack. Dallas’ Joe Pavelski won that contest by coming closest to 21.
The actual skills competitions probably weren’t as entertaining as the light-hearted Breakaway Challenge, which featured multiple entertaining stunt targets by costumed professionals. Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov started off by doing a great Alex Ovechkin impression while wearing his hero jersey.
Vancouver Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko, right, and Phoenix Coyotes’ Clayton Keller participate in the Skills Competition save streak event, part of NHL All-Star Weekend, on Friday, February 4, 2022 in Las Vegas.
(AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
Perhaps most impressive, Anaheim’s talented center Trevor Zegras dressed up as a character from his favorite movie“Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” and scored an amazing spinner goal while wearing a blindfold and getting hit by dodgeballs thrown by NHL mascots and his Ducks teammate Troy Terry, who was so stunned as the crowd when Zegras scored.
“I’ve seen what he can do with a puck, and I thought he was doing something similar,” said Terry. “All I knew was that he had a dodgeball and I wasn’t supposed to hit it, which was really hard not to do.”
Zegras did not make the Pacific Division All-Star team despite an outstanding season that made him a favorite for the Calder Trophy, but he was brought into the skills competition specifically because of his showmanship.
The star center said this goal was even more difficult than his famous lacrosse-style assist to teammate Sonny Milano earlier this season because he couldn’t really see. Ducks teammate John Gibson was blindfolded twice, and Zegras said he “had no idea” how he kept the puck on his stick.
“I worked on it this morning with a couple of hockey influencers, and that’s what we came up with,” Zegras said of his scheme. “It worked exactly the way I wanted it to.”
from New Jersey Jack Hughes then performed a Las Vegas magic trick. conjuring a mini-Jack Hughes from a seemingly empty box on the ice, and the youngster then skated and scored a goal.
Raiders quarterback Derek Carr appeared in a group costume as the main cast members of the classic Las Vegas movie “The Hangover” and threw a football into the goal, though celebrity judge Jon Hamm only gave it a 7 because that’s the value of touchdowns.
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A long walk down the Las Vegas Strip from the arena, Werenski finished second to Roman Josi in the first round at the Bellagio fountains. The Blue Jackets star then won the surprising competition in the finals, easily hitting targets faster than the Nashville captain.
Werenski and Josi advanced just ahead of Olympic gold medalist Jocelyn Lamoreaux-Davidson, who finished third as the only woman in the eight-person competition.
Hedman, the towering Lightning defender, had the two hardest shots of the night at 103.2 and 102.7 mph. The six-foot-six Swede comfortably outpointed the Islanders’ Adam Pelech to win the event.
“It was a lot of fun,” Hedman said. “I get a lot of practice shooting as hard as I can.”
READ MORE: Darnell Nurse makes the hardest shot in the Edmonton Oilers skills competition
Hedman recalled competing in the event in 2017 in Los Angeles, where he missed the net with his first shot and hit the bar with his second.
“I hit the net both times here so I was happy about that,” he said.
Kyrou (13.550 seconds) was the surprise winner of the skating race, beating Los Angeles’ Adrian Kempe (13.585) in the spirited one-lap competition between eight skaters.
Jordan Kyrou of the St. Louis Blues participates in the Skills Competition Fastest Skater event, part of NHL All-Star Weekend, on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Las Vegas. AP Photo/Rick Scuteri).
(AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
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Perhaps most impressively, Rangers’ Kyrou, Kempe and Chris Kreider beat Connor McDavid, the three-time title winner. The Edmonton superstar finished fourth in 13.690 seconds.
Aho closed out the show with an easy victory in the Accuracy Shooting event, hitting all four targets in succession.
T-Mobile Arena gradually filled with fans during the event, which kicked off on a weekday afternoon in Las Vegas. Most of those fans enthusiastically booed Washington All-Star Tom Wilson, who still hasn’t been forgiven for his late hit on Las Vegas’ Jonathan Marchessault in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final. 2018.
Fans line up before an NHL hockey game between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Buffalo Sabers at T-Moblie Arena on Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, in Las Vegas. The arena is the site for this year’s NHL All-Star game.
AP Photo/David Becker
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