48th National Hockey League All-Star Game
 |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
| Date | January 18, 1998 | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arena | General Motors Place | |||||||||||||||
| City | Vancouver, British Columbia | |||||||||||||||
| MVP |
 Teemu Selanne (Anaheim) |
|||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 18,422 | |||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
The 48th National Hockey League All-Star Game took place at General Motors Place in Vancouver, British Columbia, home to the Vancouver Canucks, on January 18, 1998.
The 48th game was held in the very same year as the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, providing the NHL to show its players from all over the world. To this extent, the NHL had the all-star teams consist of a team of North Americans playing against a team of stars from the rest of the world. The format change also helped to intensify the game, as national pride would also become a factor. These provisions only applied to the players – coaches were still be selected based on which teams were the best from each conference at the time of the break. This was the last All-Star Game to feature Honorary Captains and Commissioner's Selections system that began in the 1985 and 1991 games respectively.
The Canadian Hockey Association took the all-star weekend as a way of assembling their team as a tuneup for the Olympics by inviting all 23 of its players and immersing them in what they would see at the Olympics. As the 1998 Olympics also featured the first-ever Olympic women's hockey tournament, an exhibition game between the Canadian national women's hockey team and the American national women's hockey team was also scheduled as part of the all-star festivities. 14,000 people watched the game, making it the highest attended women's hockey game in the sport's history to that time.
...
Wikipedia