The reaction to the new 3-on-3 All-Star Game format has generally been pretty good. But one player who thinks it wouldn’t be a bad thing for the game to die for good is Senators forward Bobby Ryan. Ryan appeared in his first All-Star Game last season and, as the kids say, is “so over it“.
Ryan, 28, chosen to represent the Senators last year in Columbus, noted before the visit by the Blue Jackets to the Canadian Tire Centre, most players would likely rather have the weekend off but something needed to be done because what’s happening right now isn’t working.
Would they be better off just eliminating it altogether?
“Probably, but I don’t know what you do, right? Because everyone wants to have that opportunity to see all the premiere players in one place,” Ryan said in an interview. “Maybe with the World Cup coming in to infuse something new, it could change things.
“But it’s tough for me to say … I really don’t know.” (…)
“I said it last year, that was a great opportunity and a once-in-a-lifetime thing but I maybe don’t need to go back,” Ryan said with chuckle. “That’s what I felt like when I got on the plane with my wife on the way home.
“I said, ‘I had a blast, I don’t know if you did’ and she said, ‘It was a long weekend and (they) came back tired from it.’ I think … I don’t know … if you scrap it all to altogether you’re taking away from it and a chance for fans to see all those premiere players in one place but you find another way to do it.”
If the NHL isn’t necessarily finding a way to do that, they are finding a way to implement more rest for players as they are reportedly putting in bye weeks for teams during the season. So that might solve that problem. As for the World Cup of Hockey being a psuedo replacement for the All-Star game: good in theory. But to do it in September when fans aren’t necessarily ready for hockey yet might be troublesome.
Biggest strike against getting rid of the game: You’re asking a lot of people to give up a lot of money and a lot of television revenue by just “scrapping the game”. People who make that money wouldn’t necessarily think of having a World Cup as a trade off, because “why can’t we just have everything?”
If this 3-on-3 tournament works out, Ryan’s sentiment will probably be a one-time chirp. If not, it’ll be interesting to see how much it multiplies.
