Lightning standout right wing Nikita Kucherov told teammate Mikhail Sergachev that those cries Kucherov was hearing from the Scotiabank Arena crowd in Toronto during last week’s All-Star Game skills competition weren’t actually boos.
“Kuch said that they were yelling ‘Kuch,’ not ‘Boo,’ ” said Sergachev, tongue firmly in cheek, following Monday’s practice at the TGH IcePlex, the team’s first workout since returning from the All-Star break.
It's almost impossible to get inside Kucherov's head. He doesn't open up much at all, and the few times he has to speak to reporters, he's short and does not choose to go off script. But I do wonder if there was a little bit of his trollish side showing at the skills comp.
For me, I really don't care. I didn't even watch the allstar stuff this year. Years and years ago it was a great chance to see players you normally didn't get a chance to see, but in modern times that's not really an issue anymore. You play everybody twice during the season, and with social media, youtube, twitter, the internet in general, streaming services, tv channels, etc, everything and anything you want is just a click away. Younger fans really have it good today. But anyway, what's then left for the all star skills comp and game? Unfortunately it's just not an entertaining product. Every year on the main boards we have the same threads over and over trying to think of new ways to spice things up. The league itself is still trying to solve this problem. So again, Im not sure why people care about this thing that normally fans don't care about. The tv ratings for this thing have steadily gone down for the past handfull of tries.
2017 (Los Angeles) - 2.26 million viewers / NBC
2018 (Tampa Bay)- 2.03 million viewers / NBC
2019 (San Jose) - 1.78 million viewers / NBC
2020 (St. Louis) - 1.70 million viewers / NBC
2022 (Las Vegas) - 1.14 million viewers / ABC & ESPN
2023 (Florida) - 1.49 million viewers / ABC & ESPN
Besides the skills competition and the game, there are other obligations these players have to go through for the media and for the fans in attendance. This could be from signing atuograpghs, interviews, shooting league promos, community service, etc. Oveckhin has been suspended 3 times in the past for blowing off allstar events. It is still expected that even players who can't participate on ice, still show up to contribute their time in other meaningful ways. But yeah let's not talk about that, let's talk about Kuch not skating at full speed for 30 seconds.
It's silly that TSN, Sportsnet, NHLnetwork want to talk about this now, while they've intentially been downplayed what Kuch has been doing all season long to keep the spotlight over McDavid and MacKinnon. Kuch is on pace to put up numbers very few in the league have been able to do, but he's not (as Encina puts it in his article) a "league darling" like the other two. It's not hard to see either what's coming with Bedard as the NHL is already throwing them
another outdoor game while Chicago is currently 32nd out of 32 teams in the standings. So why even try hard for a league event located in a Canadian city, when both these things are too busy making heart eyes at Canadian players anyway?
