Bratislava hosted the first EURO League All-Star game, and London was the site for the second.   The Northern Conference won both games, 7-6 and 8-4 with Alexander Burrows and Eric Staal winning MVP honors and cars to go along with it.

The third All-Star game will be held Feb. 23 in … ?

Well, we don’t know yet. It will be up to the GMs to vote on the location. There will be a small monetary benefit to hosting the game. The host city will have their average home proceeds added to the revenue side of their balance sheet. Last year, for example, London made an extra $1,285,901.

To vote for a city, go to the poll that will be posted on the Websim page Thursday. Be aware that because WSH has limits on the number of answers that can be attached to a poll, it will be divided into four parts. Please vote for one city.

In addition to the location for the game, the players who make up the two teams will be decided by votes of the general managers. In short, GMs should start paying attention to who the best and most-deserving players in the league are.

Rules will be identical to the rules of the Season 2 game.  One of Websim Hockey’s newest great features – polls – will be used to select the host city, but NOT to choose the team rosters for three reasons:

• There is no way to tell if GMs voted for their own players.
• Also, if the instructions say “Vote for 3 at each position,” and someone votes for 4 or 5 or 6, there is no way to go back to that GM to have him correct the vote(Limiting the vote to 1 per position would probably not fill out a lineup if there is one clear choice.)
• And there is no way to have weighted voting, for example, 5 points for your first choice, 3 for your second and 1 for your third.

So the voting procedure will be the same as it was in the past, with GMs sending their ranked choices to the commissioner. More on that below.

Here’s how the all-star event will work:

Date: The event will be held the weekend of Feb. 22-23.

Location: GMs will have until noon (EST) Thursday, Jan. 23 to vote on where they would like the game to be held.

Rosters:  Voting on all positions will become available once the nominees and statistics are posted.  Starting Monday, Feb. 10, the commissioner will post relevant statistics for all positions on the league forum page as well as the blog at https://eurohockeyleague.wordpress.com/  General managers will have 7 days to vote for their top 3 at each position (top 5 defensemen) in each conference. Voting will have to be done by messages to the commissioner. Five players at each forward position will be selected for each conference team.  8 defensemen and 3 goalies will also be selected. GMs may not vote for their own players.

For example, on that Monday, statistics will be posted. They will pretty much be what you see when you call up Websim’s Statistics page, only divided by conference. GM’s will have 7 days to send the commissioner their votes for the top 3 (5 defensemen)  at each position in each conference.

An announcement of the final all-star roster will be made within 2 days of the final position vote. All-stars with the highest LD rating will be considered in the naming of captains for the  squads. The commissioner will add a player from any team which did not place a player on the team so that every team gets some representation in the game.

Coaches: The coaches for each conference team have already been named by a panel of one league official. He had trouble deciding between four former superstars so each bench will feature two former stars. Former Geneva teammates Nicklas Lidstrom and Teemu Selanne will coach the Southern Conference. Lidstrom played 135 games for the Generals and scored 80 points. Selanne appeared in 162 for Geneva and Gothenburg and scored 130 points. Both lifted the EURO Cup in Season 1. The Northern Conference will be coached by Jaromir Jagr, who played 156 games with Dublin and Belfast, scoring 91 points in the process; and Daniel Alfredsson, who played 145 games in St. Petersburg and Milan and accounted for 104 points.

Skills competition:  The EURO’s fastest skater, hardest shot, and most accurate shooter will be decided the day before the all-star game. Previous  winners were:

• Fastest Skater: Steven Stamkos, Frankfurt (Season 1); Erik Karlsson, Madrid  (Season 2)
• Hardest Shot: Dustin Byfuglien, Milan  (Season 1); Shea Weber, Oslo (Season 2)
• Accuracy: Dustin Byfuglien, Milan  (Season 1); Erik Karlsson, Madrid  (Season 2)

The commissioner will take a player from each pro team roster for each of the 3 competitions. The player with the highest (SP) rating will be entered in the fastest skater contest; the player with the highest (ST+SHO) will vie for hardest shot; and the highest (SHO+PA+FI) will compete for most accurate shooter. Since chance is involved in any game, their totals will be multiplied by a random number between 95 and 100 to determine the outcomes. Winners get no money, but they do get glory and their names in the paper.

The game itself: The commissioner will use the all stars’ stats from the regular season games played closest to the all-star game to produce a box score. Total plus-minus and the goalies’ performances will be used to determine the winner of the game.  It won’t be an exact science thing, but which ever conference’s all-stars perform better that weekend will win the game. Goal scorers and assist getters from the regular season games will be thrown onto a spreadsheet and a random number generator will determine who scored and assisted in the all-star game. If a player scores a hat trick in their regular season game, he would have his name appear on the spreadsheet 3 times. If more goals are needed than there are rows on the spreadsheets, then scorers will be picked randomly, so it’s possible an all-star who didn’t score in a week could score in the all-star game.

Player of the game: The commissioner will select a player of the game. He will win a car made by a European car manufacturer and his photo will appear in the game story.