Making the All Star team is considered a great honor. This year it may be the kiss of death. There will be six players who were chosen to participate who are now out with injuries. Pekka Rinne, Jimmy Howard, Sergei Bobrovsky, Erik Johnson, Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby will all miss the game.
Rinne and Howard were both injured more than a week ago. The other four have only recently gone down. We know four of the six replacements as of right now. Jaroslav Halak, Marc-Andre Fleury and Brian Elliot will replace the injured netminders while Filip Forsberg will step in for Malkin.
The highlight of the weekend may not actually be the game but the skills competition. The players compete in various challenges including hardest shot, fastest skater, the breakaway challenge, accuracy shooting and the shootout challenge.
Teams will be selected on friday night in a "fantasy draft" format. Team captains are Jonathan Toews and Nick Foligno. Each team must draft all three goalies by the end of the 10th round and all 6 defensemen by the end of the 15th round.
I will be taking part in a fantasy draft with one of our followers later today. We will post the results and let you, our readers, vote on who drafted the better All Star team.
League Leaders at the Break
Goals – Seguin, Nash (28)
Assists – Voracek (39)
Points – Voracek (56)
Plus/Minus – Kucherov (+28)
Wins – Rinne (29)
Shutouts – Fleury (6)
Bill Minchin is a contributing writer for Flyerdelphia. Follow Bill on Twitter @wtfd103074
