The 2024 NHL All-Star Weekend gets underway tonight (Feb. 1) in Toronto and culminates Saturday (Feb. 3) with the 68th annual NHL All-Star Game at Scotiabank Arena.
Connor McDavid will be there. The Edmonton Oilers captain was selected to his seventh All-Star Game by the NHL’s Hockey Operations Department. Leon Draisaitl will be there too, making his fifth All-Star Game appearance. He was one of the All-Star Fan Vote winners.
Absent from the All-Star roster, however, are defenceman Evan Bouchard, who ranks sixth among NHL blueliners with 43 points, winger Zach Hyman, who is tied for sixth in the league with 30 goals, and goaltender Stuart Skinner, who’s tied for third in the league with 23 wins.
Bouchard is on pace for the sixth most points in a season ever by an Oilers rearguard. From Nov. 15 to Dec. 14, 2023, he had a point streak of 13 games, second longest among defencemen in team history.
Related: Hyman Snub Reveals Flaws in All-Star Vote; Here’s How To Fix It
Hyman is just the third Oilers player since the 1980s to reach 30 goals before the All-Star Break (Draisaitl and McDavid are the other two). So far Hyman has three hat tricks, which is already tied for seventh most in a single season in Edmonton’s NHL history.
Skinner has won his last 12 starts, setting a new Oilers record for consecutive victories by a netminder. His current streak of allowing two or fewer goals in 11 straight games is also a franchise best.
Bouchard, Hyman, and Skinner all could have been invited to the festivities in Toronto, but they are far from the first trio of deserving Oilers to be excluded from the All-Star Game. Here are the three biggest All-Star snubs in Oilers’ NHL history:
Defenceman: Charlie Huddy, 1983
In 1982-83, Charlie Huddy had one of the greatest statistical seasons by an Oilers defenceman, with 20 goals, 37 assists, and a plus/minus rating of 61. Not only did he tie teammate Wayne Gretzky for the best rating in the entire NHL in 1982-83, but he established Edmonton’s single-season high for plus/minus by a defenceman. More than 40 years later, that record still stands.
When the NHL reached its All-Star Break in 1983, Huddy had already scored 16 goals. At the time, the only rearguard in the entire league with more goals was Huddy’s partner on Edmonton’s top defensive pairing, Paul Coffey.
While Bouchard could join him, Huddy is thus far the only blueliner to score at least 20 goals in an NHL season for the Oilers and not be selected for that year’s All-Star Game. Huddy is also the only player enshrined in the Oilers Hall of Fame that never made an NHL or WHA All-Star Game appearance in his career.
Forward: Craig Simpson, 1988
Craig Simpson scored 56 times in 1987-88, a season that he began with the Pittsburgh Penguins before being dealt to the Oilers on Nov. 24, 1987. That trade saw Dave Hannan, Chris Joseph and Moe Mantha also go to Edmonton in exchange for Coffey, Dave Hunter and Wayne Van Dorp.
The 6-foot-2 winger had 13 goals with the Penguins and 43 goals with the Oilers, finishing second in the NHL behind Pittsburgh’s Mario Lemieux for total goals in 1987-88. He also tied Jari Kurri for most Oilers goals, despite appearing in only 59 games with Edmonton.
Six members of the Oilers, including four forwards, suited up for the 1988 All-Star Game, but Simpson wasn’t among them. If that omission stung Simpson, he used it as motivation, scoring an incredible 24 goals in 25 games following the All-Star Break. Then he went and scored 13 more times in 19 playoff games to help the Oilers capture the Stanley Cup.
Simpson is the only player in NHL history to score 53 or more goals in a season and not make at least one All-Star Game in his career.
Goalie: Cam Talbot, 2017
Cam Talbot was an absolute workhorse between the pipes for Edmonton in 2016-17, when he ranked first among all NHL goalies with 73 games and 4,294 minutes played and faced a league-high 2,117 shots.
That season, Talbot tied for the NHL lead and set a franchise record with 42 wins. He made 1,946 saves, the most in the league in 2016-17 and the second most in a single season in Oilers history.
Talbot finished the season with a goals-against average (GAA) of 2.39 and a .919 save percentage (SV%). His play in 2016-17 was instrumental in Edmonton returning to the postseason after a 10-year absence.
McDavid, making his All-Star debut, was the lone Oilers player in the 2017 midseason classic. Five years later, Talbot would finally get his first All-Star invite, as a member of the Minnesota Wild in 2022. Talbot is back at the All-Star Game again this year, representing the Los Angeles Kings.
Bouchard and Hyman may yet be selected for the All-Star Game during their respective careers. And Skinner, who already has the 2023 All-Star Game under his belt, could earn another invite in the future.
As for now, once the Oilers return to action following the All-Star Break with a road game against the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday (Feb. 6), Bouchard, Hyman, and Skinner would do well to follow the example of Simpson: take their snubs out on the opposition for the rest of the regular season, and then go on a playoff run all the way to the Stanley Cup.
