The NHL All-Star Game would be the worst part of the NHL season if the awards show didn’t exist. Both of these events are cringeworthy exercises in presenting the players to the public in a more humanizing way, but as everyone who has watched an NHL player interview knows, NHLers are dull. They’re dull on purpose. The culture of hockey is, for a long list of reasons, one of an insular group that presents a bland face to the world.
Many people who like to start sentences with, “But in the NBA, though...” would like to see more personality in the NHL, and then, naturally, when an NHLer shows who he is, the tune changes to, “Not like that.