From Feb. 1-3, 44 of the brightest stars in the National Hockey League will gather in Toronto for a re-imagined All-Star Weekend.
But the spotlight may shine brightest of all on a die-hard fan of the NHL and the Toronto Maple Leafs, singer Justin Bieber.
The 29-year-old pop superstar grew up in Stratford, Ontario — about 90 minutes west of Toronto. He has a longstanding friendship with Maple Leafs star scorer Auston Matthews and, in 2022, had a hand designing the Leafs’ ‘Flipside’ Next Gen jerseys, which remain popular.
“After the tremendous success of our first NHL, Adidas and Drew House collaboration for the Maple Leafs’ Next Gen jerseys, we have looked forward to another opportunity to bring a bold, fashion forward look to NHL jerseys,” said the NHL’s chief brand officer and senior executive vice president, Brian Jennings. “The All-Star Weekend in Toronto is the perfect setting for a fresh perspective on the All-Star jersey. The vibrant colors in this year’s All-Star collection are both youthful and classic and offer the perfect complement to the young NHL talent set to meet in Toronto for this year’s NHL All-Star Weekend.”
Holding the event back in hockey’s biggest market is an outstanding opportunity for the league to further build on its relationship with a big name like Bieber.
If fans want order a jersey with their favorite player’s nameplate, however, they’ll have to wait till Feb. 1. For the first time since 2015, the NHL’s player draft returns on Day 1 of the festivities. The current 3-on-3 format was introduced in 2016, so this will be the first time we see four team captains each selecting groups of nine skaters and two goalies from the available 44-player pool.
After the NHL initially selected one player from each team to form a base of 32, the remaining 12 slots were left open to fan voting, with no restrictions this year based on division or conference.
When the results were revealed on Saturday, Canada came up big.
The Maple Leafs’ William Nylander, Mitch Marner and Morgan Rielly will join Matthews in front of their home fans, while Leon Draisaitl of the Edmonton Oilers will join his teammate Connor McDavid. And in the biggest flex of all, the Vancouver Canucks will be sending four additional players to join their captain, Quinn Hughes. Forwards Elias Pettersson, J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser were all voted in, and goaltender Thatcher Demko led the fan voting with 1,398,699 votes, according to the NHL — more than 5,000 more than second-place Nylander.
Sitting first overall in the NHL standings as of Saturday night and riding a five-game road winning streak after a 1-0 win in Buffalo, the Canucks’ head coach, Rick Tocchet, will also be behind one of the benches in Toronto. He’ll join Rick Bowness of the Winnipeg Jets, Peter Laviolette of the New York Rangers and 2023 Jack Adams winner Jim Montgomery of the Boston Bruins, whose teams sit first in each division by points percentage as of Saturday night.
The other skater from a U.S.-based team who was voted in was defenseman Cale Makar of the Colorado Avalanche. He’ll join Nathan MacKinnon and Avs goalie Alexandar Georgiev, who was also voted in. The other two goalies who were voted in were Sergei Bobrovsky of the Florida Panthers and Jeremy Swayman of the Boston Bruins.
Four team captains will be elected to conduct the draft. They’ll be paired with celebrity co-captains and while nothing has been confirmed yet, the marketing zing of a potential Matthews-Bieber pairing seems too promising for the league to ignore.
On Saturday, the NHL also unveiled the first 10 players who will competed head-to-head in the league’s new-look Skills Competition, with a grand prize of $1 million on the line.
Another fan vote is now open through Thursday, Jan. 18, to determine the final two skills competition participants.
The changes, and the intrigue, have added plenty of zip to the run-up of All-Star event that is traditionally jeered by fans, even while it serves as an important marketing platform for the league and a valuable opportunity to engage with corporate partners. After a couple of years in warm-weather locations after the pandemic pause — Vegas in 2022 and Florida in 2023 — this year’s event returns to a more traditional hockey hotbed, which hasn’t hosted the event since 2000.