How To Be An All Star At The NHL All Star Game.
After two Fat Tuesdays and a few gos at the slot machines, my two friends and I showed up at T-Mobile arena in Vegas for the NHL All Star festivities. We took a six hour flight from Boston to see the city in full force, as the NFL Pro Bowl and NHL All Star Game overlapped on the same weekend.
Maybe it was the Vegas factor, but the weekend bridged hockey and parties like I’ve never seen before. Outside T-Mobile Arena they had a DJ playing people into the building. The city was transformed into a sea of yelling fans, a scattered rainbow of jerseys from every city with an open white claw in every hand.
Amongst the many things I learned at NHL All Star weekend were some key takeaways that will definitely be utilized when I go back to another All Star game in the future. So, without further ado, I present to you my running list for “How to be an All Star at the NHL All Star Game:”
#1) Embrace the skills competition because it’s way better than the actual game.
My friends and I attended both the skills competition on Friday and the All Star game the following day. It is unclear if the players were actually drinking during the skills competition (I hope they were, that’d be awesome), but whether it was during or after, they were most definitely “playing guilty.” The shift in energy from Friday to Saturday was comical. Coming from three girls who are only a year or two out of college, we know a hangover when we see one, and there were certainly a lot of hungover NHL stars that Saturday. From the looks of it, Jack Hughes and Trevor Zegras may have been a beer pong team.
It’s easy to cover up a hangover-induced lack of speed with good camera work, but in person you can really see the hurt. The more I think about this, I think the NHL deliberately puts a big-time musical guest in to distract from for the lackluster performance. This brings me to a side-note observation from the weekend: Machine Gun Kelly likes high places.
In addition to his recent stunt at Austin City Limits, where he scaled some scaffolding several stories up into the air, MGK stood on a platform dangling at the top of T-Mobile Arena’s ceiling during Saturday’s game. While he was swaying hundreds of feet in the air, I passed by a couple NHL employees. I heard one say to the other, “Woah! Is he going to drop down from that?” The other looked him straight in the eye and said, “For how much fucking insurance we paid for him to do that, he better.” It’s no secret that MGK goes for the shock factor. Is he overcompensating for something by doing this? I think he has to be. But he is dating Megan Fox, so maybe not.
#2) Bring a sign if you want to get on the jumbotron.
Because the team element of an NHL game is gone and some of the inside jokes don’t hit like they do in hometowns, nobody brings signs to an All Star game. I can’t emphasize how huge of a missed opportunity this is. On a whim, not knowing that we’d be the only ones in the arena with a sign, my two friends and I decided to tape two pieces of cardstock together in homage to my favorite player, Minnesota Wild forward Kirill Kaprizov, and my New Yorker friend’s favorite, Ranger Chris Kreider. The sign, pictured above, simply said “Kreids and Kirill, borscht and chill?” on one side and “OPA!” on the other (opa means “wow” in Russian and borscht is a traditional Russian root vegetable soup, yum!). I am happy we played up the Russian angle given that Kirill proudly wore the jersey of his Russian brethren, Alex Ovechkin, in the shootout challenge. While the sign’s references did skew toward Kaprizov, my friend who loves Kreider more than life itself, had her Rangers jersey on insuring each player had equal love.
As my friends and I stumbled out of our hangovers on Friday morning, we nearly decided to forgo the beautiful, black-bubble-lettered sign that would become a staple in our group’s weekend aesthetic. Thankfully we didn’t because, according to reliable sources, Auston Matthews and Brady Tkachuk were pointing at us while we were on the jumbotron. Having a sign basically makes you a character in the All Star game. After the skills competition, while grabbing a slice of pizza from a speakeasy in the Cosmopolitan hotel, we had someone say, “Hey! You guys are the girls with the sign.” This was not the only time we were recognized over the course of the weekend either.
#3) Put your dating apps on outside of T-Mobile arena.
If you’re looking for prime gold-digging soil or hoping your NHL All Star weekend will turn into a whirlwind romance, make sure to refresh your apps (Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, Raya, check 'em all off the list) outside of the rink. Or better yet, find out where the players are staying, and just happen to be swiping while sipping a dirty martini in the hotel bar.
#4) Wear a jersey.
If you ever attend an NHL All Star weekend, my first word of advice is to wear a jersey. I majorly overlooked bringing my Winter Classic MSP jersey and regretted it the entire weekend due to the amount of energy a jersey can bring. Rangers fans excitedly screamed at my friend, sparking conversation with people we otherwise wouldn’t have met.
I did however have a Minnesota run-in without a jersey because, on the huge patio that surrounded the arena, there were scattered statues that looked like pucks with photos of each player on them. Of course, I naturally gravitated toward the Kaprizov puck, and ran into family friends from Minnesota. Kirill brings people together!
#5) Befriend Jon Hamm.
Jon Hamm has proven time and time again that he is a dedicated hockey fan. From suffering through -20 degree temperatures to watch the Blues play the Wild at this year’s Winter Classic to bringing the energy to the All Star skills competition as a shootout challenge celebrity judge, Jon Hamm bleeds hockey.
Put simply, Jon Hamm is awesome. My biggest regret of the weekend is not befriending him. I’m throwing this in here as advice because I wouldn’t put it past him to be at the center of next year’s All Star Game. If you wear your Blues jersey and name drop him on your sign, I’d say you have a pretty good chance.
