It’s reasonable to bemoan the death of the Breakaway Challenge heading into the 2017 NHL All-Star Game, but we should also give its replacement “The Four Line Challenge” a shot.
Puck Daddy’s Greg Wyshynski provides a nice breakdown of some of the ways the event might be great and also why it may not work, stated well here:
This could also be the new “passing pucks into mini-nets,” as these players frustratingly miss shot after shot after reaching a certain distance and the crowd slips slowly into a coma.
Indeed. The event itself is kind of a brain-full to explain in words, so luckily the NHL laid it all out in this video:
Introducing our all-new #NHLAllStar Skills Competition: The @Honda NHL Four Line Challenge. Here’s how it works. https://t.co/bLWKBZb8Bg
— NHL (@NHL) January 23, 2017
Yeah, that’s a lot to digest.
After sorting things out a bit, it does kind of make you miss the sublime skill of Alex Kovalev, who probably would get a fairer shake these days. One of his old mix tapes is basically an argument for this event:
Martin Brodeur also would have been a game-changer, what with goalies getting bonus points later in the competition:
It almost makes you yearn for old-timers to get an invite to the festivities, eh?
Then again, the beauty of competitions like these is we get to find out which All-Stars boast the same freakish skills. There won’t be systems or opponents to get in the way of those displays, either.
Of course, as Wyshynski notes, it also opens the door for silent crowds and players frustratingly missing targets ... but there’s a segment of the audience that will love that part the most.