Who will be the last one to be picked in the NHL All-Star game draft???

The 2011 NHL All-Star game is around the corner. No doubt, the change in the selection process will spike some interest from all the hockey fans. Everybody wants to know who will be the last guy to be selected for the game. Don't tell me that the captains Nicklas Lidstrom of the Detroit Red Wings and Eric Staal of the host Carolina Hurricanes don't think about it either. No doubts, whatever happens, there will be something to prove for this hockey player. I hope he'll decide to prove all of them wrong and be the best player on the ice that day. Hopefully, he'll teach us a couple of hockey tips, that we discuss on this blog. Any predictions who he'll be? 


Read this story by David Pollack in Mercury News. Let me know what you think.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- For one of the NHL players gathering here this weekend -- among the world's best at his chosen sport -- Friday night could be humbling.

That's because the NHL All-Star game's new playground-style team selection process means somebody must be picked last. Someone has to end up being the final player chosen when captains Nicklas Lidstrom of the Detroit Red Wings and Eric Staal of the host Carolina Hurricanes point their powerful fingers and choose up sides for Sunday's game.

Defenseman Dan Boyle, the lone Shark playing in the game, certainly doesn't want to be that guy.

"I guess that's fun for the fans and the media," he said, "not so much for the players."

Yet the draft is the brainchild of two former players, Brendan Shanahan and onetime Sharks captain Rob Blake. The hope is it will inject interest and intrigue into a much-criticized event that has been overshadowed in recent years by the outdoor Winter Classic.

Boyle, as it turned out, doesn't have to worry about being the last player taken because the fine print of the new system requires that all defensemen be taken by the 15th of 21 rounds.

On the other hand, St. Louis Blues forward David Backes recognizes that he is a candidate for the dubious distinction. One online gambling site, in fact, put Backes and Edmonton's Ales Hemsky -- who has since been sidelined with an injury -- as co-favorites to be the last name on anybody's list.

Backes is taking it philosophically, saying he was honored and thrilled to see his name on the roster.

"I guess being the last guy picked is better than being the first guy left off," he said.

At one point, Shanahan and Blake thought about finding a method that would not single out the final player chosen, maybe by dividing up the last six privately without spelling out who went where.

But other players they floated that idea past weren't buying it.

"The position the players took was, 'Hey, we're at the All-Star game,' " Blake said Thursday, hours after it was announced he had taken a job in the NHL's hockey operations department. "We've all played games like this growing up, and they're having fun with it."

The draft has boosted visibility for an event that many fans avoid because it lacks the physicality that hockey thrives on. Understandably, nobody wants to get hurt in an exhibition game.

But Blake suggested the new format actually could improve the quality of hockey on display.

"You're never going to have the intensity of a Game 7," he said. "But if Nick Lidstrom is picking me and I know I'm going to perform for Nick Lidstrom, that's a lot different than the way it was set up before. I think that'll have a little more of the edge to it."

In the recent past, teams have been set up by conference or by national origin (it was billed as North America vs. The World). Early on, it was a matchup pitting the defending Stanley Cup champions against the best of everybody else.

This year, online voting determined the top six players for the game, and the NHL chose 36 others. Those players in turn selected their captains who, in turn, named two assistants. Everybody else is up for grabs, as the NHL -- as it did successfully with the Winter Classic -- reaches back to hockey's roots.

Some players joked that the current system could go even further by simply putting every player's stick at center ice, then scattering half to one side and half to the other. Find your stick, find your teammates -- just like back on the pond.

Boyle understands the reasoning for the new format -- "Things were getting stale and the draft's getting more hype than anything else" -- even if the hockey at his initial NHL All-Star experience in Montreal in 2009 turned out being more serious than expected.

"The third period was actually pretty good hockey," he said of the game the East won in a shootout, 12-11.

Mock drafts have been held on hockey websites, and Boyle has fared pretty well. In one, for example, he was taken in the ninth round.

"That's respectable," he said.

Boyle is taking a what-will-be-will-be attitude and hasn't tried to lobby either captain, though he may have a sympathetic ear in Staal.

"He and I were alternates at the Olympics in Torino," Boyle said of the 2006 Games where neither player saw action. "We bonded there, so hopefully he'll remember that."

Logan Couture could have something at stake, too, as he's among the 12 rookies participating in Saturday's skills competition and ultimately will be drafted by Lidstrom or Staal as well.

There were reports that more rookies still might be added to Sunday's game as injury replacements. If Couture were to be selected, the last thing he would fret over is his place in the draft.

"If I get the opportunity to play and I'm the last guy taken, I don't really care," he said. "I'd do that to get picked for that game. It doesn't matter to me."