Sunday, January 30, 2011

SuperSkills Quick Summary

Team Staal: 33
Team Lidstrom: 22


Fastest Skater
- Michael Grabner recorded the two fastest times: 14.061 and 14.238.
- Cam Ward beat Tim Thomas in the head-to-head goalie race as Thomas fell down.
- Kris Letang barely beat out Duncan Keith in the backwards race.
- Team Staal led Team Lidstrom 5-3 after the first round.

Breakaway Challenge
- Alex Ovechkin won the challenge with a goal from his knees and deked around Marc-Andre Fleury, who was lying down on his side nonchalantly.
- P.K. Subban came in second despite not scoring a goal. He energized the crowd by putting on Jeff Skinner’s jersey.
- Loui Eriksson had a nice goal where he wrapped around the net twice before deking out Carey Price.
- Corey Perry also showed off some skills, doing a few tricks with the puck on his stick.
- There were only three goals on 23 attempts.

Accuracy Shooting
- Daniel Sedin became the fourth player to nail all four targets in four attempts. In his next round (worth two points, not one), he hit four of five.
- One the third round, Jonathan Toews did not hear the whistle to go and Patrick Sharp won. The ‘officials’ rewarded a do over and Toews ended up winning, not leaving the crowd too happy.

Skills Challenge Relay
- Two groups from each team participated in the new event. Team Lidstrom came out on top, with the fastest time of 2:09, courtesy of Toews’ rapid fire target shooting.
- I thought this new event was pretty cool. It had a lot of different aspects – one-timers, passing, stick-handling, shooting – and was something refreshing. The passing was fun to watch, including saucer passes.

Hardest Shot
- Zdeno Chara broke his own record with a 105.9 mph slapshot in the final round. He also touched 105 mph.
- Shea Weber was the leader in the clubhouse when he registered a 104.8 mph slapper on his second shot.
- Alex Ovechkin broke his stick on his second shot, had a couple shots that didn’t register on the radar gun, and then tripped over a loose camera cord.
- Rick Nash brought up the rear with an 88.5 mph ‘rocket’.

Elimination Shootout
- Corey Perry won the shootout with three goals; he beat out Martin St. Louis, who had a couple nice backwards moves.
- Henrik Lundqvist and Fleury were stout in net, stopping 10 of 11 shots they faced.
- Eric Staal made the hometown crowd happy with a goal to complete the first round of shooters, but failed on his second attempt.

More to come from Raleigh...

Ryan Porth for Preds On The Glass

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