The Carolina Hurricanes will not have the opportunity to defend their record of three straight All-Star Skill Competition titles as the NHL announced that Sebastian Aho was not one of the skaters participating in the skills competition.
The NHL is trying out a new format for the All-Star weekend, such as a return of the player draft for the actual 3-on-3 game, but the big change is a move to a points-based gauntlet for the skills competition.
Players will participate in six of eight events and an ultimate winner will be crowned at the end to win $1 million, however the field has been drastically shrunk.
In fact, only 12 skaters representing just seven teams were selected for the skills competition section of the All-Star weekend.
There will be one event that includes goaltenders, the One-on-One event AKA a shootout/penalty shot, so technically the field will open up to 20 players representing 12 teams, but it's a huge reduction from years past.
The Canes had won an event in three straight seasons (Jaccob Slavin winning the accuracy shooting in 2020, Aho winning the accuracy shooting in 2022 and Andrei Svechnikov winning the fastest skater in 2023), but it seems like that fun is now done.
Aho will still participate in the All-Star game on Saturday, Feb. 3 and he'll be finding out which team he'll be on soon as the player draft happens tonight at 6 p.m.
The four teams are being captained by Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Quinn Hughes.
Recent Articles