How Connor McDavid won the 2024 NHL All-Star skills competition
The NHL All-Star skills competition is over. Connor McDavid, the man who ‘saved’ the skills competition by influencing its overhaul, wins the $1 million cash prize. He dominated the fastest skater contest, the stick-handling event the accuracy shooting portion of the night, and clinched the overall win through a victory in the final event, the obstacle course. It was McDavid’s night from start to finish.
The skills competition had a hot start when McDavid lit the rink ablaze with a time of 13.408 in the fastest skater event. The night lost a little steam after that with some events that didn’t have the same pace and flair. It also didn’t help that video review impacted some of the events and changed the results of certain events on the fly. But the addition of special guests like Connor Bedard and Sidney Crosby, as well as Sarah Nurse, Blayre Turnbull, Doug Gilmour and Steve Thomas, helped engage the crowd.
Most notably, Nikita Kucherov’s performance may go down in All-Star skills infamy with some half-hearted efforts and trolling through the competition. He, alongside David Pastrnak, Quinn Hughes and Leon Draisaitl were the first four to be eliminated.
Once the bottom four was gone, we watched players go through the one-on-one contest which was a big hit in the liveblog. A player calls out which goalie he thinks he can score the most goals on and then tries to score as many as he can in one minute. The goalie who makes the most saves also wins $100,000. So even if a player keeps missing on their chances, you still have a reason to be intrigued. No matter the future of this event, the NHL needs to keep this.
The final event, the obstacle course, produced some fantastic drama even if the explanation seemed a bit complicated to understand at first. What matters is that the players understood it. McDavid was the final man up in the obstacle course and he bested Cale Makar’s time to secure the win.
As for overall impressions? The NHL has something with their skills competition. There is some fine-tuning to be done. But at least, in person, there was more good than bad.
