" You have to admire the NHL for being bold with their formats for the All-Star Game over the years, or as its known this year, the Tim Horton's 2012 NHL All-Star Game. This edition of the game marks the second year of the All-Star Fantasy Draft, where several captains get to pick their own team from a pool of available talent. On Thursday, Daniel Alfredsson and Zdeno Chara made some predictable selections with Team Alfredsson, co-captained by Henrik Lundqvist, loading up on Swedes and Team Chara grabbing all the available eastern European talent and scooping up his Boston teammates, Tim Thomas and Tyler Seguin.

While not perfect, this format certainly has made the All-Star game more entertaining to follow, especially last year, with the Leafs' Phil Kessel being the last girl asked to dance, brooding before saying "it's not a big deal." San Jose's Logan Couture was the last man picked this time around, earning a new Honda SUV for his pains. Previous formats for the All-Star Game have included the traditional East versus West and the old school Campbell versus Wales, and the much discussed North America versus the World (and by "world", we mean northern and eastern Europe).

However, the star of the weekend has always been the Skills Competition. Memories of Al Iafrate's booming slap shot, Mike Gartner blazing around the rink in the fastest skater competition and Owen Nolan calling his shot against Dominik Hasek always return when the skills competition is talked about. On Saturday, Zdeno Chara blasted a 108.8 mph slap shot to win the hardest shot contest, but wouldn't it be more interesting if the players busted out the wooden Sher-Woods and Kohos next year, just to see where they'd measure up without the benefit of the composite cannons they use now? "