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Date | January 27, 2008 | |||||||||||||||
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Arena | Philips Arena | |||||||||||||||
City | Atlanta | |||||||||||||||
MVP | Eric Staal (Carolina) | |||||||||||||||
Attendance | 18,644 | |||||||||||||||
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The 56th National Hockey League All-Star Game was held on January 27, 2008 at the Philips Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, home of the Atlanta Thrashers, during the 2007–08 NHL season. It was the only time the All-Star Game was held in Atlanta, as the Thrashers moved to Winnipeg in 2011 as the new Winnipeg Jets.
Atlanta had originally been scheduled to host what would have been the 55th NHL All-Star Game in 2005, however that game was canceled due to the NHL Lockout of 2004–05.
Players in this game, like the 55th National Hockey League All-Star Game, wore Rbk EDGE jerseys. The jersey logos had been redesigned, showing a simple logo that displays East and West on the respective conference jerseys, captain and alternate captain patches on the right side (instead of left), and the player's number below the logo.
As Atlanta is a place of significance to the Civil Rights Movement (among the hockey-related achievements is John Paris Jr. becoming the first black to coach a pro hockey team, the Atlanta Knights of the International Hockey League), and 2008 is the 50th anniversary of Willie O'Ree breaking hockey's color barrier with the Boston Bruins, the NHL chose the All-Star weekend to honour the diversity of the league.