2023 AHL All-Star Classic: Eastern Conference All-Stars Take The Skills Competition
The American Hockey League's (AHL) All-Stars took to the ice at Place Bell in Laval, Quebec Sunday evening for the 2023 Skills Competition.
The Eastern Conference All-Stars controlled the competition early after the two conferences split the puck control relay races 2-2, and never really looked back in a 16-10 win over the Western Conference All-Stars.
The AHL All-Star Challenge, the annual 3-on-3 tournament with the All-Stars broken into four teams (by division) will commence on Monday night beginning with the North Division vs the Pacific Division.
Michael Carcone (Tucson) started off the fastest skater event with a blistering 13.282 second lap around the rink, which at the time was the 2nd fastest time in AHL All-Star history.
Up next after Carcone, Ethen Frank set the AHL All-Star record in the fastest skater - beating Anthony Greco's 2019 time (13.251) with a time of 12.915 seconds. In comparison, at this past weekend's NHL All-Star event Andrei Svechnikov won the event with a time of 13.699 seconds.
The East All-Stars took both goals in the fastest skater event to take a 4-2 lead, with Frank's record-breaking time as the fastest as well as the East having the quicker average time among those who participated.
The Eastern Conference also won the rapid fire event to stretch their lead to 5-2 thanks to eight saves on 10 shots from both Brandon Bussi (Providence) and Joseph Woll (Toronto). Woll was later named the top goaltender of the Skills Competition during the closing awards after the event.
The East All-Stars also swept the board in the hardest shot competition to extend their advantage over the Western Conference All-Stars to 7-2 as Syracuse Crunch defenseman Darren Raddysh took home hardest shot honors with a top blast of 102.0 mph, which ranks as the 9th hardest shot in AHL All-Star Skills Competition history. East All-Stars also had the higher team average as well to earn that second point.
The Western Conference All-Stars made some noise in the accuracy shooting event, with Rockford IceHogs forward David Gust becoming just the 4th AHL All-Star to ever go 4-for-4 in the event. The West also got the point for the most targets hit in the fewest attempts to get the deficit to 7-4.
In the pass and score event, Eastern All-Star goalies Joel Hofer and Joseph Woll each shut out their opposing trios with three saves each. Meanwhile, Ethen Frank (Hershey), Riley Nash (Charlotte) and Alex Belzile (Laval) scored on three attempts. In all, the East All-Stars outscored the West All-Stars 5-2 in the pass and score event to push East's lead to 12-6 heading into the breakaway relay.
The highlight of the breakaway relay was when Syracuse Crunch forward Gabriel Dumont allowed his son Mateo to take his breakaway. The younger Dumont scored on San Diego goalie Lukas Dostal before putting his glove to his ear as he skated back toward center ice. Zac Jones, Tyson Forester and Riley Nash also scored goals for the East All-Stars.
Brayden Pachal, Seth Griffith, Riley Barber and Thomas Bordeleau scored breakaway goals and Dustin Wolf (Calgary) was the only goalie to stop all five breakaway attempts he faced, but it wasn't enough to prevent the Eastern Conference All-Stars from taking the 2023 Skills Competition 16-10.
