Marc-Andre Fleury, Jaroslav Halak are NHL All-Stars, so stop crying
Pekka Rinne of the Nashville Predators and Jimmy Howard of the Detroit Red Wings were both named to the 2015 NHL All-Star Game roster. Alas, injuries – and the chance to rehab over the all-star break – knocked both of them out of the game, as Rinne has a sprained knee and Howard has a wonky groin.
Who got the call to replace them?
Thank the hockey gods, it was Marc-Andre Fleury of the Pittsburgh Penguins, along with the even more worthy Jaroslav Halak of the New York Islanders.
Fleury’s absence from the All-Star Game generated a baffling amount of outrage from his teammates and from pundits. Does he have the numbers? Of course. He’s having the best regular season of his career, with a .926 save percentage, a 2.16 GAA, six shutouts and 22 wins.
But again, we come back to what the all-star game is and is not. It’s an exhibition weekend in which all 30 teams need a representative, a show put on for local fans. So Sergei Bobrovsky makes the team for the host Columbus Blue Jackets; Roberto Luongo, Jimmy Howard and Carey Price make it as the only reps for their teams selected for the game; Pekka Rinne makes it as the NHL’s best goalie this season; and Corey Crawford of the Chicago Blackhawks was voted in by the fans.
With the Penguins already having two players on the team, there was literally no other goalie Fleury could have been put over. If you had beef with this, then you have beef with the current incarnation of the all-star format. Because based on its concept and construction, there was every reason to leave Fleury out.
And if the Fleury campaign is aimed at rewarding first-half merit, is there another goalie more worthy of it than Halak? He’s five wins away from passing his single-season high, and has been the absolutely backbone of the Eastern Conference’s most surprising team. The Islanders had four shutouts as a team last season; Halak has four on his own already.
If there had been one injury and two goalies from which to decide on a replacement, I would have picked Halak.
But with two open spots, everyone gets to be happy.
Well, except for Washington Capitals fans, who are wondering what the hell Braden Holtby needs to do to get into the all-star game. (Although Nicklas Backstrom probably deserved a spot ahead of Holtby and Ovechkin this season.)
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