Washington Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin and Boston Bruins’ Zdeno Chara blast the skills competition
What amazing competition was in store for NHL fans at the NHL All-Star weekend’s Super Skills event since no one could have expected what went down on Saturday night at the RBC Center.
Zdeno Chara of Boston Bruins, who is already the three time defending champion of the XM NHL Hardest Shot competition, broke his own record once again.
Facing Nashville’s Shea Weber, things looked down for Chara in the first round of the event when it ended with a 104.8-104.1 difference.
Somewhat of a surprise for Chara were the fans of over 18,000 giving him a standing applause and roars of support when he hit the hardest shot yet recorded which gave him the competition.
"I wasn't exactly sure what the rules were", Zdeno Chara said when he hit his 105.9 MPH shot. "I knew there was some kind of final or something, then I realized, 'OK I have one more shot.' I tried to do my best and it did happen, so I was glad".
When watching his record setting shot, you notice that his stick first ate some ice on its way to the puck, if that wouldn’t have happened and the stick went straight to the puck, it might have resulted in rather much bigger result.
Receiving support in an away from home stadium is rare in such a competitive sport, but the fans were accredited for this by Chara upon his competition winning shot.
The Skills Competition is like the Slam Dunk Contest of the NBA for the NHL. Fans love the way that some of the greatest players can perform in other aspects of the game.
To some extent all players had the chance to perform to their limits in the Hardest Shot competition except Alex Ovechkin, a star player of Washington Capitals who had repeated problems during his attempts.
The first time his stick broke into pieces while performing the shot and couldn’t return back to his original rhythm when having to use another player’s stick.
Facing leading scorer, Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos, who recorded an outstanding 101.9 MPH on his second attempt, Ovechkin wasn’t able to recover at all from Stamkos’s shot with a final shot registering at 97.2 MPH.
Ovechkin didn’t allow that to let him down and amazed the crowed by receiving over 38% of the fan voting via text messaging when he brought the puck in with the k**b before flipping it back wining over Marc-Andre Fleury from Pittsburg in the G Series NHL
Skills Challenge Relay.
In the Bridgestone NHL Fastest Skater Competition, Grabner grabbed the title by completing a whole round around the rink in 14.2 seconds beating Taylor Hall who was short by 14.7 seconds.
That wasn’t the only thing going on at the RBC Center, the BlackBerry NHL Breakaway Challenge and the McDonald's NHL Accuracy Shooting also saw great players take part.
However, in the end Team Staal stood triumphant at a 33-22 win over Team Lindstrom, overall in the NHL Skills Competition 2011.
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