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CSN's Russ Thaler calls it "The Futures Game." The Washington Capitals' webmaster, Mike Vogel, calls it the "Young Guns Game," which at least used to be correct. Whatever it's called, defenseman Mike Green is undoubtedly excited to represent the Capitals in the NHL's Young Star's game on January 23rd.
Given that the brightest young stars in the game will be playing in the actual all-star game, Green will play in a watered down version of what is usually an insignificant event anyway. How unimportant is the Young Stars game? Well, they play it three days after the All-Star game, on a Tuesday. The teams are about half the size of real hockey teams, they skate four on four for the entire game, and the players aren't allowed to hit each other.
Hockey is different from basketball and football because hockey players, once drafted, tend to spend two to four years in minor leagues or European leagues before even starting to play in the NHL, and then often move back and forth several times. The NHL wants to make itself accessible to fans of other sports, so it gives out the same rookie of the year award and hosts the same type of future stars game as sports where players go straight from college to the pros. These contradictions have led the NHL to name a thirty-one year old international superstar as its rookie of the year and, worse, to name Brian Sutherby the MVP of its 2004 Young Stars game. Sutherby has yet to equal his three point output from that farce in any single game of his five NHL seasons.
Photo of Mites on Ice by Eli Resnick
If the NHL want their youth showcase to mean anything, they should expand the definition of a young player to include the most talented young players who are left out of the All Star game due to inexperience. One such player is Alexander Semin, who is currently seventh in the league in goals.
Semin is certainly as worthy of the title of a Young Star as Tomas Vanek of the Buffalo Sabres. Vanek is two months older than Semin, came into this season with 29 more NHL games played, and this year has scored 46 points in 46 games on a great team's first line, compared with Semin's 44 points in 41 games on a good team's second line. Vanek is the highest scoring player on either Young Stars team, but Semin, who would be second-highest in points and highest in goals, does not qualify for consideration because he is not technically playing on his first NHL contract.
Semin is still honoring his first NHL contract, but in a rewritten version, due to legal complications that resulted when he returned home to Russia during the NHL's lockout, and was drafted into the Russian army, who allowed him to serve his military obligation by playing professional hockey in Russia for two years. Several convincing arguments have been made for Semin's inclusion in the All Star game, but if that ship has sailed, then the League should try to find some other way to recognize a young player who, in his second NHL season, scores more goals per game than all but two of its All Stars.
Mike Green is on track to become a solid player in the NHL in just a couple of years. He was a key component of the Hershey Bears' 2006 AHL championship season, and has played confidently for the Capitals this year. However, after some early-season heroics, he's been silent on offense, and he's watched his ice time drop as less exciting talents like Steve Eminger and 27 year old first-year NHLer Lawrence Nycholat earn more ice time by playing better defense.
Watching Mike Green play no-hit defense on a team with several great young players will be fun for those who see it, but it will not make any great statement about the future of the game of hockey. Watching Alexander Semin play with Tomas Vanek and Evgeni Malkin, on the other hand, would give fans a look at the shape of things to come. It is a shame that the NHL has once again made contracts more of a public issue than hockey. But in a league whose owners go on strike whenever they feel they've agreed to pay their players too much, nothing's shocking.
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You're right that the young stars game is played on a Tuesday, but it's the night before the all star game, not three days later.
I don't know that I'd point to Sergei Makarov as an example of the tension between the NHL's predilection for ensuring player growth and its desire to reach out to fans by doling out ROY awards and hosting future stars. Like Viacheslav Fetisov and Igor Larionov, Makarov was part of that first wave of Soviet players granted permission to play in the NHL. So, it wasn't so much an issue of honing his skills in the former Soviet Union in preparation for future NHL play; it was that he had no choice but to play in the Soviet Union for years. If Alex Ovechkin had been born in the same year as Makarov, he likely would have been in contention for the ROY award as a 31-year-old too.