The NHL is adding a brand new event to its All-Star skills challenge leading up to the annual All-Star game. Get ready for “The Four Line Challenge,” where hockey’s best will attempt to hit targets from four different lines on the ice. We’ll be seeing some long range shots in this one.
Sportsnet revealed the basic premise for the new All-Star skills competition event, which takes the place of the breakaway challenge, a one-on-one event between a skater and a goalie.
Players will try to hit targets in the net from the closest blueline, centre ice, the far blueline and then the opposite goal line. Goalies will be offered the chance to try from the farthest distance, with more points available if they can do it.
We’ll see how well this event plays out. It might be fun to see how accurately a player can send the puck down the length of the ice. These players are far more skilled than the average fans you see take a shot from the middle of the ice during an intermission with a chance to win a big prize by getting the puck in a cut-out hole in a board in front of the net.
But is that really going to be entertaining? The NHL hopes so, because it is the best option it has available right now. I imagine there will be some good crowd reactions as a puck makes its way down the ice and looks more and more as though it might hit its target.
The breakaway challenge went into retirement this season as a mutual decision between the league and players. Perhaps too many goalies were left feeling jilted in an event in which the shooters tend to have the advantage more often than not. No goalies will be between the pipes to block those slapshots from the far end of the ice in The Four Line Challenge.
