All-Star Game to be played June 8-9

Plans are under way for the Season 10 EURO All-Star Game, to be held on the weekend of June 8 and 9.

General Managers in the EURO League will be asked to vote on the host city for this year’s all-star game. The host city will not have to do anything special for the event and will receive nothing for making their arena or stadium available. After the Northern Conference dominated the All-Star game for the first four seasons, it’s been evening out in recent seasons. The South has won the last two to make the all-time record 6-3 in favor of the Northern Conference.

To see the updated All-Star Guide and Record Book, hover your cursor over the “Record Book” link at the top of this page.

Here is a list of the host cities and results of the first nine all-star games.

Season 1 – Bratislava, Northern Conference won 7-6
Season 2 – London, North 8-4
Season 3 – Copenhagen, North 8-4
Season 4 – Paris, North 11-6
Season 5 – Helsinki (outdoors), South 10-3
Season 6 – Stockholm, North 12-7
Season 7 – Lisbon, North 11-10
Season 8 – Moscow, South 8-6
Season 9 – Minsk, South 11-6

To vote for a city, go to the poll that will be posted on the Websim page. 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, one for each division. New this year, the all-star committee of one decided to include only cities that have not hosted the game in the past.

How is voting conducted?

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 are the best and most-deserving players in the league.

Rules will be identical to the rules of previous games. Websim Hockey’s 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 June 8-9.

Location: GMs will have until about 2 p.m. (EST) Tuesday (May 21) to vote on division favorites and then they will have 2 days after that to vote among the finalists.

Rosters: Voting on all positions will start this week. Nominees and statistics will be posted on this blog. The post will pretty much be what you see when you call up Websim’s Statistics page, only divided by conference and position. General managers will have until June 2 to vote for their top 5 at each position (top 8 defensemen) in each conference. Voting may be done by messages to the commissioner and a ballot will be provided that can be copied and pasted. Up to 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.

An announcement of the final all-star roster will be made within 2 days after voting closes. 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 will be named by a panel of one league official and will be announced when the host city for the game is announced.

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

Fastest Skater: Kris Letang, Paris
Hardest Shot: Wei-Yang Zhang, Moscow
Accuracy: Erik Karlsson, Belfast

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 whichever conference’s all-stars perform better that weekend in their EURO League games 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 4 times. 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.

Trivia Answers:

Dustin Bygfuglien played in 6 All-Star games representing 4 teams (Milan, Athens, Lisbon, Geneva)
Patrick Kane is the right winger who has started the most all-star games (4) as the top vote-getter at his position?
Three Johnsons have appeared in the All-Star Game: Jack, Erik and Tyler.
Of the first six Rookies of the Year, only Jan Kovar has not made it to the All-Star Game yet.