All-Star Overload

All-Star Game fever has taken over pretty much every professional hockey league, and the CHL is definitely no exception.

While Adam Dunivan actually gets to witness the game and wrote an interesting piece about how Eagles founder (and six-time NHL All-Star) Ralph Backstrom feels about the format, two of my other fellow CHL beat writers/bloggers (I bet you'll never guess who) have taken to debating it via the Web.

Greg Rajan shared his opinion rather early this morning, and he believes that this format is good for the CHL. Here are a couple of his reasons (abbreviated):

- The format needs a shakeup.
- This format has people talking, whether they like it or not.
- This game will be more representative of the sport.

A few hours later, Brian Sandalow posted his rebuttal, and one of his points rings especially true to me:

- The Eagles vs. the CHL format deprives a lot of players worthy of an All-Star appearance.

When I heard about the format, my first thoughts were that it was pretty odd that a team that wasn't even the defending champion would be doing this (Yes, I know they're the Eagles) and that the All-Stars better watch out for the Eagles' tough guys.

I guess we'll see tomorrow night exactly how much is at risk and exactly how well the All-Stars can mesh in a day compared to what some of the Eagles have been building together for years.

As Bob Hoffman's All-Star edition of "Shots from the Point" mentions, the game will be televised on Altitude Sports and Entertainment (Dish Network channel 410 and DirecTV channel 681) for those of you who make enough money to afford extensive cable plans. For the rest of us, it will also be streaming live on the new CHL Player.

As I've obviously mentioned previously, rookie center Darryl Smith and goaltender Sebastien Centomo will be the Bucks' on-ice representatives at the game, which Bryan Benway noted today.

The full roster can be reached via this link as a Microsoft Word document.

The All-Star frenzy led to a delay in sharing of the Player and Goaltender of the Week for games played Jan. 5-11, but both honors were announced this morning and both went to Mississippi RiverKings.

Former Bucks netminder Kevin Beech nabbed the goalie award, while center Jeff Nelson earned player honors.

Beech earned his second Goaltender of the Week nod by going 3-0-0 in his three starts last week, saving 74 of the 76 shots he faced and posting his second shutout of the season. He's currently second in the league with 18 wins (18-8-0) and a 2.34 goals-against average.

His .910 save percentage, however, is 11th, behind both Centomo (sixth - .918) and Ryan Gibb (eighth - .916). Kinda makes you wonder how much better the current Bucks' goaltenders' records would be if they only faced an average of 26 shots per game...

Speaking of save percentage, though, Arizona Sundogs backstop Joel Gistedt has one of the lowest in the league at .853 through 14 games played, yet he has been called back up to the San Antonio Rampage. Guess the Coyotes have to take care of their second-round picks.

Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs forward Neil Clark also got an AHL callup, his to the Rochester Americans, pretty much immediately following the Mudbugs' 4-3 overtime win over the Bucks on Friday night. Though Clark didn't register a point in that game, I doubt the Bucks would have minded the callup coming a bit sooner. The Mudbugs certainly seemed to miss him on Sunday.

But anyway, Nelson earned his first weekly honors of the season by scoring two goals, handing out five assists and posting a plus/minus of +6 in four games last week, including an assist and the game-winning goal in the RiverKings' huge 2-1 win over the Oklahoma City Blazers on Sunday. He has recorded at least a point in 10 straight games.

In less pleasant news, at least for Tom Coolen, Brian Pellerin was introduced as the new coach of the Amarillo Gorillas yesterday. Coolen had led the Gorillas to a league-worst 10-22-0 (2o points) record prior to "parting ways" with the team before its 4-1 loss to the New Mexico Scorpions on Sunday.

Pellerin played for the Gorillas in their first season with that name (and first prior to the name change) and was also a player/assistant coach in his final season and an assistant in the season immediately following it. Since then, he had been an assistant coach for the Portland Winter Hawks of the Western Hockey League until this season.

In other news, Brian and Bob Przybylo have released midseason report cards for the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees and the Blazers, respectively.

Przybylo also shared his current power poll yesterday, with the Bucks only dropping one spot (five to six).

Now that all that's covered, I'm going to go on an NHL tangent.

First of all, the contestants for the Breakaway Challenge during this year's All-Star SuperSkills Competition sound like they could make it a lot of fun. If only the NHL could get these things televised on basic cable...

Meanwhile, I must admit I am not a big fan of Alan Robinson, who covers the Penguins for the Associated Press. I understand Sidney Crosby is the face of the team and needs to be mentioned in pretty much every story, but Robinson often blames him for things that anyone who saw the game could tell you were not his fault and then today took a fairly interesting topic (the Malkin-Ovechkin "feud") and merely recycled information and a quote from Malkin, then tossed in a bunch of quotes from Crosby. How is he the best person to talk to about this situation? It's not as though Ovechkin has any qualms about talking to the media, and Geno's English is improving...

Okay, I just got distracted by a SportsCenter anchor reading the first three paragraphs of the AP story about Michael Crabtree's decision to enter the NFL draft verbatim rather than write a single word of his own script. Yeesh. I think that's my cue to go.