Of the three events in this weekend’s EURO All-Star Game Skills Competition in Helsinki, the one that odds makers aren’t even touching is the Fastest Skater competition. It’s anyone’s guess who will come away with that race with the title on Saturday.
In the Hardest Shot competition, Dustin Byfuglien, three-time winner Shea Weber, Tyler Myers and Ilya Kovalchuk are the – pardon the pun – heavy favorites. All our men have 230 or more pounds to put behind their shots. Weber has won it three times and Byfuglien won it in Season 1. Alexander Ovechkin and Nathan Horton have outside shots to win, but everyone else will be there just to take in a beautiful August night in Finland.
In the Accuracy Shooting competition, Erik Karlsson and Sidney Crosby are the odds makers’ favorites, but only by a little. Steven Stamkos, Evgeny Malkin, Claude Giroux and a few more players could steal the title. If Karlsson wins again, it will be his third title in five seasons.
But in Fastest Skater, there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 favorites. Steven Stamkos has won this title twice, but scoring the hat trick will be extremely difficult. In Websim, as players mature, their speed attributes get better and better until they are 30 years old and then that attribute starts dropping as legs get older. The result for this competition is 11 skaters with 100 speed attributes and 2 more with 99.
Here is a list of the top 3 winners of past Skills Competitions held the day before the All-Star game:
Season 1
Fastest Skater: 1st – Steven Stamkos, Frankfurt; 2nd – Erik Karlsson, Madrid; 3rd – Sidney Crosby, Belfast
Hardest Shot: Dustin Byfuglien, Milan; Shea Weber, Oslo; Zdeno Chara, Bratislava
Accuracy shooting: Dustin Byfuglien, Milan; Evgeny Malkin, Paris; Erik Karlsson, Madrid
Season 2
Fastest Skater: Erik Karlsson, Madrid; Patrick Kane, Zurich; Steven Stamkos, Frankfurt
Hardest Shot: Shea Weber, Oslo; Zdeno Chara, Bratislava; Dustin Byfuglien, Milan
Accuracy shooting: Erik Karlsson, Madrid; Sidney Crosby, Belfast; Dustin Byfuglien, Milan
Season 3
Fastest Skater: Steven Stamkos, Frankfurt; Sidney Crosby, Belfast; Jeff Skinner, London
Hardest Shot: Shea Weber, London; Ilya Kovalchuk, Zurich; Dustin Byfuglien, Athens
Accuracy shooting: Kris Letang, Paris; Dustin Byfuglien, Athens; Jonathan Toews, Bratislava
Season 4
Fastest Skater: Petr Vrana, Gothenburg; Sidney Crosby, Belfast; Brad Marchand, Helsinki
Hardest Shot: Shea Weber, Copenhagen; Tyler Myers, Bratislava; Ilya Kovalchuk, Zurich
Accuracy shooting: Erik Karlsson, Madrid; Dustin Byfuglien, Athens; Sidney Crosby, Belfast
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.
