Plans are under way for the Season 14 EURO All-Star Game, to be held on the weekend of Sept. 17 and 18.

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.

The event has come to be “owned” by the North. The Northern Conference All-Stars raised their record to 9-3 in the series with a Season 13 win (12-10) in Zurich. Nathan MacKinnon of Belfast scored a hat trick and won game MVP honors along with a Polestar electric vehicle.

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 13 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
• Season 10 – Berlin, North 16-3
• Season 11 – Oslo (outdoors), North 12-11
• Season 12 – No game, although teams were selected in a vote of GMs
• Season 13 – Zurich, North 12-10

To vote for a city, go to the poll that was posted today on the Websim Live Feed. Be aware that because WSH has limits on the number of answers that can be attached to a poll, it will be divided into two parts. Previous host cities are not included in the election.

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. Here is the ballot.

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 last season. Each GM will receive a ballot in the form of a Google survey in their personal e-mail accounts. GMs will simply vote for each position and click send. To prevent a GM from stuffing the ballot boxes and stealing the election, each GM will receive a password in a private message from the commissioner. Your ballot will ask you to type in that password at the end. That way, one guy can’t fill out 14 ballots, claiming to be a different GM each time.

Players on the ballot will be listed in no particular order. GMs can write in anyone who is not on the ballot. You can go back and change your votes at anytime before the Sept. 13 deadline.

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

Date: The event will be held the weekend of Sept. 17 and 18.

Location: GMs will have until about 1 p.m. (EST) Wednesday (Sept. 7) to vote on the host city. If there is a tie, a runoff election will be held over the next couple of days.

Rosters:  Voting on all positions will start in a couple weeks. General managers will have until Sept. 15 to vote for their top 5 at each position (top 8 defensemen) in each conference. 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 3 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 after 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. Season 13 winners were:

• Fastest Skater: Par Arlbrandt, Milan
• Hardest Shot: Patrik Laine, St. Petersburg
• Accuracy: Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Berlin

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 and his photo will appear in the game story.