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McDavid, Ovechkin, Boeser shine at NHL skills competition

Kyle Cantlon
Writer
Brock Boeser shot the lights out at the NHL skills competition. (Photo by Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images)
Brock Boeser shot the lights out at the NHL skills competition. (Photo by Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images)

Fastest Skater

Competitors: Brayden Point, Zach Werenski, Rickard Rakell, Noah Hanifin, Josh Bailey, Nathan MacKinnon, Jack Eichel, Connor McDavid

Format: Each skater is timed for one full lap. Fastest lap time wins.

Results: Late addition and home-crowd favourite Brayden Point kicked things off with a 13.579. But it was the reigning champ of the event, Connor McDavid, who took retained his title as fastest skater with a time of 13.454. Per NHL.com, McDavid is the first player to ever win the Faster Skater challenge in back-to-back years.

Passing Challenge

Competitors: Nikita Kucherov, Claude Giroux, Brayden Schenn, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Eric Staal, Alex Pietrangelo, Kris Letang, Drew Doughty

Format: Players compete in three skills events — target passing, a give-and-go passing course and the mini-net challenge — over one round. Fastest completion time wins.

Results: St. Louis Blues defenceman Alex Pietrangelo, who went sixth, took home the title as best passer with a dominant time of 46.610, more than eight seconds better than second-place Eric Staal’s time of 54.679.

Save Streak

Competitors: Henrik Lundqvist, Connor Hellebuyck, Pekka Rinne,
Marc-Andre Fleury, Andrei Vasilevskiy

Format: Goalies face a minimum of nine shooters and compete to make the most consecutive saves.

Results: Golden Knights netminder Marc-Andre Fleury took home the crown, putting together a streak of 14 straight saves, edging out Pekka Rinne by one. With goalies getting to choose their own entrance songs for the inaugural event, Fleury went with Frozen’s “Let It Go” — a spectacular choice.

Puck Control Relay

Competitors: Johnny Gaudreau, Aleksander Barkov, Erik Karlsson, John Tavares, Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews, Tyler Seguin, Patrick Kane

Format: Players compete in one round consisting of three different skills, including puck handling, cone control and the gates.

Results: Johnny Gaudreau put together a blistering time of 24.65 seconds to take the event. Some, like Erik Karlsson, didn’t have as easy a time as Johnny hockey did with the final challenge, though.

Hardest Shot

Competitors: John Klingberg, Alex Ovechkin, P.K. Subban, Brent Burns, Steven Stamkos

Format: Each shooter gets two slapshot attempts from 30 feet out. Highest recorded speed wins.

Results: 32-year-old Alex Ovechkin clearly (not that we need this competition to tell us) hasn’t lost the zip on his shot, blasting his first one 98.8 MPH and following it up with a 101.3 MPH drive to take the event over Stamkos and a trio of hard-shooting blueliners.

Accuracy Shooting

Competitors: Brian Boyle, Blake Wheeler, James Neal, Brock Boeser, Brad Marchand, Anze Kopitar, Sidney Crosby, Steven Stamkos

Format: LED targets will randomly light up for three seconds, and each shooter will attempt to connect from 25-feet out. Player who hits each of the five targets in the fastest time wins.

Results: Vancouver Canucks first-year sniper Brock Boeser shot the lights out it this one just like he has all season. The leading scorer among NHL rookies picked apart all five targets in just 11.136 seconds.