All-Star Game isn't NHL's best shot anymore

It's easy to pick on the NHL All-Star Game, as it is with any all-star event: It's not really a game, more a showcase for the league's stars. Which, in yesterday's game in Raleigh, wasn't even the case: Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, two of the biggest stars, were home with injuries.

The game wound up an 11-10 win for Team Lidstrom over Team Staal. Though Nicklas Lidstrom is a surefire Hall of Famer and Eric Staal is the star of the host Hurricanes, perhaps the NHL should be naming teams in honor of the league's biggest current stars or at least have greats such as Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux captain the squads and choose the sides.

But neither the missing stars nor the team names was the reason the game was a bit of a dud.

It was bound to be that way: The NHL has two events that completely overshadow an All-Star Game, and the league should be looking for a way to incorporate the annual Winter Classic and the quadrennial Olympic hockey tournament into an All-Star event that could become another signature hockey moment.

The thrill of last February's Olympics can't be duplicated on a yearly basis. There's simply too much at stake. But it's imperative, first, that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHL players association chief Donald Fehr negotiate a labor deal that includes a three-week break every four years to allow the NHL players to participate in the Olympics.

It's the sort of publicity that the league can't generate on its own. Furthermore, the format can and should be implemented every two years in a round-robin, World Cup-style event. The league's owners are not crazy about shutting down the NHL for three weeks every other February, but the eyes of the world could be on the league's elite, as they were last year.

Then there's the Winter Classic. It's found a niche on New Year's Day, and there's no need to tamper with that. Perhaps the All-Star Game could be a nice lead-in on New Year's Eve, an outdoor event more fitting for the game of shinny it becomes (and a bit more authentic with Brendan Shanahan's choose-up format).

Or incorporate the game's younger stars more: Have a team of the top rookies and second-year players play the veterans, giving the kids a chance to prove themselves on a bigger stage against the established guys.

But the international way is the way of the future. The Olympic tournament has helped players such as Mark Streit and Mats Zuccarello get their shots in the NHL, and there are many more good players-in-waiting who look to that tournament as a chance to be noticed.

That format, too, would spice up a skills competition that was great in featuring Zdeno Chara blasting a puck 105.9 mph but a mess of confusing rules and in-arena noise otherwise. If it's not going to be groups of, say, five or six players from each NHL team competing against one another, teams of five or six representing his country would make it much more exciting.

The NHL should congratulate itself for having two events in the past year - a tremendous Olympics and another popular Winter Classic - that made hockey a national and international must-see.

But as a result, the plain, old All-Star Game needs to go. The bar has been set too high for it now.