All-Star Weekend starts today with the Skills Competition in Stockholm.  Later today, some interesting questions will be answered in three skills competitions. The most important questions are

• Who is the EURO’s fastest man?
• Who has the hardest shot?
• Who is the most accurate shooter?

But there are some sub plots this year.

• Will defensemen out-skate, out-shoot and generally out-shine their forward counterparts? Seven defensemen advanced to the All-Star game competition by being the fastest skaters on their teams. Four of them – Kris Letang, Tyson Barrie, Max Chudinov and Alex Goligoski – have to be legitimate contenders for the crown. Six defensemen including co-favorites Erik Karlsson and Alex Pietrangelo will vie for the Most Accurate Shooter honor, and in the Hardest Shot competition, 11 defensemen are competing.
• Will Petr Vrana of Gothenburg join Steven Stamkos as the only man to win the Fastest Skater honor twice? He will have stiff competition. Vrana and 11 other skaters have Speed ratings of 100. Stamkos was beaten out by linemate John Tavares for the right to represent Lisbon today.
• Will this new kid, Connor McDavid of Oslo, steal the Accuracy Shooting title? The teen just joined the league a couple of weeks ago and he is already one to watch in this competition.
• Will the well-traveled Shea Weber win the hardest shot title for the fourth time with four different teams? He won it when he played for Oslo, then when he was with London, then with Copenhagen, and last year, as a member of Lisbon H,C., he placed second. This year, he will shoot as a Madrid Royal.
• Will Lisbon’s Dustin Byfuglien equal Weber’s feat of winning the hardest shot title three times? The two, along with Tyler Myers and forward Nathan Horton, are considered the top contenders for the title.
• Will one of the host team’s favorites win a competition. Stockholm’s Bobby Ryan probably won’t win the Hardest Shot title, but two of his teammates have a chance to win titles. Keith Yandle will need a lot of luck to win the Accuracy Shooting title, but Brendan Gallagher is as fast as anybody in the league and with the home fans cheering him on, has a real shot at being crowned Fastest Skater.

Here is a look at who is representing each team in the Skills Competition. A random number (RND) will be drawn and averaged with the player’s skill number to produce a total. The numbers next to Goligoski’s name show an example of how it will look for everyone.

And here’s a history of the event: