Sidney Crosby’s assignments for skills competitions announced

Feb 2, 2023 - 10:18 PM

Tomorrow night (Friday) the NHL’s All-Star events kick off at 7:00pm eastern time with the skills challenges. Here’s a list of what is on tap this year:

Player assignments for all seven events of the 2023 NHL All-Star Skills™ presented by DraftKings Sportsbook are listed below.

Upper Deck NHL Fastest Skater™

Great Clips NHL Breakaway Challenge™

Discover NHL Tendy Tandem™

Enterprise NHL Splash Shot™

Honda NHL Accuracy Shooting™

Chipotle NHL Pitch ‘n Puck™

GEICO NHL Hardest Shot™

The Penguins are represented at the All-Star game by only captain Sidney Crosby. Sid drew two assignments, he’s set to participate in the Splash Shot and also the Breakaway Challenge.

What the heck is a Splash Shot? Good question. To NHL for the answer:

Competition takes place on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, FL. The ocean spray, breeze and sand add to the challenge of this exceptional Skills event, as four pairs of players fire at targets to attempt to dunk their opponents.

Participants

Sidney Crosby, PIT

Nathan MacKinnon, COL

Mikko Rantanen, COL

Cale Makar, COL

Igor Shesterkin, NYR

Adam Fox, NYR

Brady Tkachuk, OTT

Matthew Tkachuk, FLA

Dunking opponents sounds like it could be fun, especially with Sid’s BFF involved in Nathan MacKinnon. Having the Tkachuk boys out there should also add some personality and heat up the competitive levels.

Crosby will also be doing the breakaways, which sounds straightforward enough — but wait there’s a catch.

Great Clips NHL Breakaway Challenge™

Participants

Celebrity goaltender: Roberto Luongo

Mitchell Marner, TOR

Alex Ovechkin, WSH/Sidney Crosby, PIT (teaming up)

David Pastrnak, BOS

Matthew Tkachuk, FLA

For the first time ever ? (maybe, going out on a limb to guess), there is some sort of unholy tag team in an individual event that only requires one person. Is this going to be boring and Crosby and Ovechkin just alternate turns? Maybe. Or will they just say screw it and take the first ever 2-on-0 breakaway? That would only be enhanced since the new Hall of Famer and funny guy Roberto Luongo is in net and will surely make whatever outcome happens way more entertaining.

Hopefully this lives up to some sort of enjoyable shenanigans and creates a fun moment for Sid and Ovi to add to their long history. But, knowing the NHL, the chances of it being cringe is also running high, so truly only time will tell if this will be something cool or very regrettable.

The regular All-Star game itself, where Crosby and Ovechkin will be more conventional teammates on the Metropolitan Division kicks off on 3:00pm on Saturday. The Metropolitan stars game starts at 4:00.