Who’s got skills in EURO?

The EURO Skills competition will be the first part of All-Star weekend in Copenhagen, 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.

Mnay of the same players who competed in Bratislava and London, the sites of the first two all-star games, will be giving it another go in Denmark, but there will be some fresh faces as well.

Like Tyler Myers of Bratislava. His teammate and captain, Zdeno Chara, is always one of the favorites to win the hardest shot competition, but Myers edged him out in the team competition. As a result, Chara may not be heading to the all-star weekend at all. He is having a sub-par season and many believe his numbers won’t get him enough votes to make the Southern Conference team. Chara has 10 points in 29 games, a minus 7 rating and a minus 7 takeaway-giveaway differential. He has not even been among his team’s best defensemen, let along the conference’s. Chara almost won the hardest shot competition last year, falling two-tenths of a second behind Shea Weber of Oslo. Dustin Byfuglien of Milan was third. During the first all-star game, it was the same three players but in this order: Byfuglien, Weber and Chara.

And Weber and Byfuglien will be there again this season, but wearing different sweaters. Weber was traded to London and Byfuglien to Athens. Big Buff finished first in hardest shot and accuracy shooting in the first competition and third in both events last season. He will again compete in both categories.

Erik Karlsson of Madrid was also a double winner – first in fastest skater and accuracy shooting last year – and he will try to defend both titles this year.

The fastest skater competition will remind viewers of the Olympic speed skating events. There are some real flyers in it, including Karlsson, Steven Stamkos of Frankfurt, Patrick Kane of Zurich and Tyler Kennedy of Oslo. But Alex Goligoski will be the crowd favorite. The Trident defenseman finished 4th and then 6th in the previous two competitions.

In the hardest shot event, look for Byfuglien and Weber to duel to the end, with Myers and Ilya Kovalchuk of Zurich ready to take the crown if the big guys falter.

In the accuracy shooting comeptition, it should be a 5-way battle involving the two previous champions – Karlsson and Byfuglien – along with Kris Letang of Paris, Sidney Crosby of Belfast and Kovalchuk. The latter is good enough to win, but it seemed he did not take the event seriously in the past. Last season, 18 players scored higher than he did. The year before, he was 8th.

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.