The EURO Skills competition will be the first part of All-Star weekend in London, with each team’s fastest skaters and most accurate and hardest shooters vying for titles in three events.
The league today announced who will be competing.
Many of the same characters who competed a season ago in Slovakia will be at it again. 
Dustin Byfuglien, the mammoth Milan rearguard will be trying to defend the two titles he won last year: EURO’s hardest shooter and most accurate shooter. In the hardest shot competition, the three favorites are again Byfuglien, Shea Weber of Oslo and Zdeno Chara of Bratislava. They finished in that order last year. In the accuracy shooting event, Byfuglien edged out skillful Evgeni Malkin of Paris, and they were followed by talent-laden players Erik Karlsson, Jonathan Toews, Sidney Crosby, Phil Kessel, Alexander Ovechkin, Ilya Kovalchuk, Steven Stamkos and Daniel Sedin. All of the top 10 except for Malkin will be back in the competition this year. Malkin’s teammate Kris Letang beat him this year in the team competition to earn the trip to England this weekend.
Letang will also compete in the fastest skater event, but he won’t be among the favorites in what looks to be a real horse race. Defending champ Steven Stamkos of Frankfurt returns, as do runner-up Karlsson, Crosby and Copenhagen’s Alex Goligoski, who completed the top 4 last year.
Ovechkin of Moscow and Geneva’s Marian Gaborik will each compete in all three events. There will also be two Staals and two Boyles competing. Jordan Staal of Madrid will compete for hardest shot honors, while brother Eric of Stockholm goes for the most accurate shot crown. Big Brian Boyle of Frankfurt will be in the hardest shot competition, while Dan Boyle of Munich – no relation – will try his luck in the other two events.
Some lesser-known names will also take the High Street Arena ice on Saturday, like speedsters Petr Vrana of Gothenburg and Max Chudinov of Minsk.
The chart shows each team’s representative and their Websim rating going into the contest. Hardest shot is SHO + ST, while accuracy is SHO+PA+FIN. That rating will be multiplied by a random number that represents effort/luck to yield their scores.
