McDavid
Makar
MacKinnon
Matthews
Draisaitl
Crosby
Barkov
J Hughes
Q Hughes
Panarin
Kucherov
Pastrnak

I went for (in my opinion) the 12 best players with an emphasis on skill over hockey IQ without trying to balance age, nationality, position, conference, etc. Honourable mention to Pettersson, hes interchangable with a couple guys on my list

We had 8 overlaps…
1. Sidney Crosby
2. Jack Hughes
3. Quinn Hughes
4. Nikita Kucherov
5. Cale Makar
6. Auston Matthews
7. Connor McDavid
8. David Pastrnak

…and four differences

1. Connor Bedard - League rarely misses an oppotuniyy to promote the young stars and would be cool to see him there with Crosby, McDavid. But Panarin would be good choice too…is having great season and from biggest market.

2. Kyle Connor - If there were no constrains, MacKinnon probably deserves it here, but I had already selected Makar and was doing one from each team.

3. Jack Eichel - I think they will have one player from most recent cup team, would seem like something was missing if they omitted him (especially if they took Barkov over Eichel)

4. Clayton Keller - a bit of an underdog choice. Draisaitl probably deserves it over him, but like Makar/MacKinnon, I kept it to one per team.

Sounds like it will be a fun gig for whomever they select.

Tkachuk
Stützle
Giroux
Chychrun
Batherson
Sanderson
Norris
Tarasenko
Joseph
Brannstrom
Greig
Kelly

What??? I've never seen a bigger lie in my life. The NHL is terrible at marketing stars.

Really? They brought Zegras in to skills comp a couple of years ago just for this reason. Look at the list of guys that attend their pre-season media event. Watch NHL network promos.

They are not good at protecting young stars. They do not allow young stars to earn as much as they could in other sports. But I think they try to market them as much as possible.

Are these ticket requests?

You compare how stars are handled in any other major sport, it's not close. Hockey stars are regional, sports stars are international.

Here's my picks with my reasoning in order of how much of a lock I think they are. Tried to put emphasis on players who are having a particularly good season this year, so someone like Draisaitl who is a top 12 player in the league, but his team is already represented in the top 12 and he's not having a great season to his standards, I have exluded. It would surprise me if he was in the event anyways, but this how I would do it personally.

1. McDavid- Obviously, it was his idea
2. Matthews- Gotta have home town rep
3. Quinn Hughes- Multiple narrative reasons
4. Jack Hughes- brother vs brother
5. Makar- Cale vs Quinn narrative for top defenseman
6. Kucherov- current points leader
7. Bedard- have to market him, can do Connor vs Connor or young vs old with Crosby
8. Crosby- "is Sydney Crosby still good?" has been making this league money for years now, why stop now

Those top 8 I think definitely make it, the next four are more up for debate. You could start doubling up on some teams here but I'm going to try and keep it to twelve unique teams, so sorry to MacKinnon and like half of the Vancouver Canucks who would have made it otherwise.

9. Pastrnak- they was big personalities, and Pasta's great for marketing
10. Panarin- another fun personality, gets the NY market involved
11. Eichel- representation from the previous cup champs
12. I'm gonna pencil in Kyle Connor here, I would have had him higher if I wasn't for his recent injury but idk if he'll even be healthy in time for the actual game and he definitely won't be healthy when they make the decisions on who's participating so while I don't think h'll end up going I think he deserves a mention here based on his play alone.