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From: jeff@dciem.UUCP (Jeff Richardson)
Newsgroups: net.sport.hockey
Subject: An All-Star complaint
Message-ID: <1789@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Feb-86 10:22:58 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.1789
Posted: Mon Feb 17 10:22:58 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Feb-86 12:24:50 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 40

Glen Sather should not be allowed to coach the All-Star team.  Either
that or the rules should be tightened up so that he can't do what he did
this year.  The rules say that after the fans pick the starters (in previous
years the starters were picked by a vote of writers, I think), the coach
gets to pick the rest of the players for his team.  The fans didn't do too
badly, but I don't think they based their selections entirely on this seasons
performances, as they should have.  (Fuhr and Gosselin should not have been in
the game; Moog and Froese should have been the starters with Wamsley and
Vanbiesbrouck backing them up, and Naslund should have been picked ahead of
Goulet).

Anyway, back to Sather.  He put nine Oilers on the team, though you can't
blame him for Fuhr's presence.  Most of them deserved it, but picking Lee
Fogolin and Kevin Lowe, while people like Al MacInnis, and Reed Larson
were ignored was ridiculous.  Not only that, even though there were
four forward lines and three defence pairings on the team, Gretzky's line
with Coffey and Wilson on defence (I guess Wilson was there as a token non-
Oiler so that it wouldn't look too obvious) played at least half of the
third period and most of the overtime.  I don't remember seeing Neal Broten on
the ice at all during the game, and Gary Suter, Rob Ramage and Mark Hunter
didn't seem to get much ice time either.  Even Ogrodnick, Savard, Tanti and
Taylor almost disappeared once the third period got going.  Sather was probably
playing to win by using his best players, but the all-star game is supposed to
be a showcase of the best players from every team.  With Sather coaching, we
don't get to see half of them.  With most teams only playing each other three
times a season, we don't get to see most of these players enough.

I don't object to having the Stanley Cup champs play the all-stars; in fact
I think it's a great idea because it gives the stars from the other teams a
chance to beat the champs, and because it gives a good comparison of the team
concept against a set of individual stars.  They should make it official though
so that we'll at least get to see some of the other stars from the Campbell
Conference for more than just a couple of shifts.  Another format I would
like to see is Canadian-born all stars against Americans and Europeans.  In my
opinion, both of these formats are highly preferable to Campbell vs. Wales
or NHL all-stars vs. Russians.
-- 
Jeff Richardson, DCIEM, Toronto  (416) 635-2073
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