| Khabibullin stood out even among the stars Last weekend, almost the entire NHL gathered in Los Angeles. For another stellar weekend was held in this sunny Californian city, the crown of which was the 52nd All Stars match. If we sum up all the events of the holiday, we will find that an unconditional victory was achieved by representatives of the “Rest of the World” (that is, Europe), who for the fifth year in a row had been sorting out their fundamental relations with the North Americans.
The show's program began on Wednesday, when a duel took place on the ice rink for the first time between teams made up of former NHL stars and other celebrities - film actors, musicians, and representatives of other sports. But this was just, figuratively speaking, a warm-up for the main types of the program. First of all, before the meeting of young talented stars who are not yet 25 years old. At first, each team included 12 guys, but then due to injury, one of the teams was left with 11 members. However, this fact clearly did not influence her major defeat - 7:13. The fact is that Jim Fox's players turned out to be an order of magnitude weaker than those of his counterpart Barry Melrose. The latter's team included a very respectable company, led by the strongest debutant in the league, Ilya Kovalchuk. This match became a real benefit for Kovalchuk, who scored 6 (!) goals.
On the same day, veterans also took to the ice. One of the teams was made up of players from the US Olympic team, which won the tournament in Lake Placid in 1980. They were up against former NHL stars. At one time they beat their opponents by 5 goals (7:2), but the match ended in a draw - 12:12.
But the greatest attention of hockey fans on Friday was drawn to the current NHL stars, who first took part in the SuperSkills Competition. Let us remember that among the Europeans there were five of our hockey players: Nikolai Khabibullin, Sergei Gonchar, Sergei Fedorov, Alexey Yashin and Alexey Zhamnov. Our attention was attracted by the Latvian Sandis Ozolins and Aleksey Zhitnik, who suddenly decided to remember that he was a native of Kyiv and glued to his shoulder not a Russian flag, but a Ukrainian one. Fedorov became the real hero of this competition. At first, he only slightly lost to Finnish forward Sami Kapanen in the fight for the title of the fastest hockey player in the NHL (14.201 and 14.039 miles per hour, respectively), and a little later he won the competition for the strongest shot. Only Sergei reached the 100 mph mark that day - 101.5. These successes of Kapanen and Fedorov, as well as the successful actions in goal by Khabibullin and the Czech Dominik Hasek, became the main guarantee that the world team won the competition program for the fourth time in the last five years - the score was 12:11.
Fedorov succeeded a day later, during the most important number of the program - the All Stars match. After the second period, the “aboriginals” won – 5:3, but everything turned upside down in the final 20 minutes. Khabibullin came onto the court (each of the six goalkeepers of both teams was in action for one period), and the Europeans were transformed! First, forward Espen Knutsen, the first Norwegian in All Stars history, narrowed the gap to a minimum. And then, in the 57th minute, Fedorov scored a brilliant goal. He received the puck almost at his blue line, skated forward, took out one of his opponents on the swing and delivered a shot with deadly force and accuracy. After Swede Markus Näslund put the world team ahead, the opposing coaches changed the goalkeeper to a sixth field player, and Zhamnov and Kapanen took turns hitting the empty “frame.” As a result, 8:5 in favor of “ours”.
Almost all eyewitnesses were sure that Khabibullin would be named the most valuable player of the match, having reflected all 20 (!) shots, but for some reason the organizers decided to highlight Chicago striker Eric Daze, who scored 3 (2+1) points. And the Canadian left the palace in a Dodge of the latest model. Valery KONSTANTINOV |
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