Uproar over Wheeler being shut out of annual NHL farce not worth energy

Opinion

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This article was published 06/01/2016 (3560 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DALLAS — If you’re feeling for Blake Wheeler today — perhaps lighting a prayer candle for the Winnipeg Jets winger or planning to storm NHL headquarters with pitchforks after his omission from the All-Star Game roster — don’t. Just don’t.

It’s really not worth it.

It was just after 11 a.m. Wednesday morning, not long after the rosters for the annual all-star farce were released, when the angst level in Jets Nation peaked. The NHL’s seventh-leading scorer (prior to Wednesday’s games) was left off a Central Division list that, in the event’s new 3-on-3 format, features just six forwards, three defencemen and two goaltenders.

Defenceman Dustin Byfuglien was pegged as the Jets’ lone representative.

Try as he may, Wheeler couldn’t hide his disappointment when he talked with media at the American Airlines Center after the announcement:

“It is what it is. It’s a popularity contest and I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised. But I have no problem taking that time and spending it with my family. I’m going to use that time to soak up as much time as I can with my wife and two kids. I feel like I haven’t seen them for three or four months now. There will be lots of good face-time.”

And then, so distraught was he from this slight against himself and future generations of Wheelers, the big winger returned to laughing and clowning around with a bunch of guys playing two-touch soccer in the hallway.

Trust me, as someone who is just now recovering from the retinal damage cause by taking in last year’s NHL All-Star Game in person, Wheeler is far better off having the opportunity to disappear from the rink for a few days. The most-entertaining part of the 2015 festivities was trying to determine which of the NHL stars clearly imbibing during the nationally-televised player draft might fall off the stage first.

Sure, there’s a certain amount of pride, honour and prestige involved in the annual event — particularly for a guy such as Wheeler who has already worn the USA’s red, white and blue at the Olympics and is having the kind of bust-out offensive campaign that has people all over the NHL taking notice. And he’d be a fantastic standard-bearer for the Jets franchise as one of the best quotes in the NHL.

So is Byfuglien, but he’s been there, done that. The big man said last year he would have been ice fishing if he hadn’t been named to the squad.

(He was asked Wednesday if this all-star selection — the fourth of his career — will cut into his ice-fishing time: “Everything,” Byfuglien replied with a grin, “cuts into my ice-fishing time.”)

All that said, honestly, who the bleep cares about this exhibition event?

It’s a grand party if you can get to Nashville for a few days (Jan. 30-31) and it’s a real opportunity for the NHL to showcase its game. But there was also a time when players would pull up lame to avoid it — coming up with mysterious maladies such as sore groins, bad backs and/or scurvy — to be able to get a mid-season weekend off. The NHL now stipulates that unless an invited player missed the last game before the all-star break due to injury, he would have to sit out the first game after the festivities should he not play.

Yes, so prestigious is this event the league had to threaten players to participate.

If Wheeler is somehow left off the American World Cup team this fall, that’s a big story. The NHL All-Star Game? It’s an event that forces representation from all 30 teams and, as a result, will not feature faces of the game such as Sidney Crosby or Henrik Lundqvist and stars Ryan Suter, Corey Crawford, John Klingberg or 19-goal man Mike Hoffman.

This is an event that does, however, include Arizona Coyotes enforcer John Scott as a team captain — a guy with one fewer career goals (five, in 285 games) than Wheeler scored last October — after thousands of fans thought it would be funny to vote in someone who hands are best at work when his gloves are on the ice, not wrapped around his stick.

In other words, getting worked up over this is a bit like being steamed for not being nominated for a best actor Oscar when the other finalists are Rob Schneider, Steven Seagal and Nicolas Cage.

So save the outrage. Wheeler may have been snubbed, but he’s in good company.

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPEdTait