The NHL has a glaring personality problem

Last night, I watched the NHL All-Star draft in its entirety. There were four teams with four honorary captains including Justin Bieber, Will Arnett, Tate McRae, and Michael Buble. HUGE names for the fourth or fifth biggest sport in America. After watching the full presentation (I’m not sure how I made it through the whole show), I am officially pulling the lever that the NHL has a glaring personality problem.

Some of the best and most popular hockey players on the planet were the captains of each team. Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews, Nathan MacKinnon, and Quinn Hughes were the captains for each team to go along with the celebrities and their assistant captains which all happened to be teammates except for Jack Hughes with his brother Quinn. I enjoyed this concept until the draft actually began.

Throughout the draft, I was just baffled at the inability of the players to capture a crowd without having a stick in hand and a puck on the ice. Zero swag. Zero presence. Zero anything. And, yes, I understand that hockey players are generally robots when they get to arena, so I wasn’t surprised.

I was friends with a number of AAA hockey players in high school and have heard countless hilarious stories from the locker room, to the team bus, to the travel stays in hotels. Why are hockey players’ stories the most incredibly out of pocket, continuously funny stories to come from sports players growing up, but turn out to be absolutely robotic when they get in front of a camera?

The draft was a disaster from the start. The teams didn’t know that they had to select two goalies by the 7th round, and somehow Michael Buble was making every pick for Team Hughes. At least Bieber, Tate, and Will Arnett were basically saying, “hey, I don’t play the game why would I be making the selections for their team?”

At least Buble was on mushrooms the whole time to bring the vibes to at least just above rock bottom. Auston Matthews did his best to pick his buddies to have minimal banter every time they were selected, while Justin Bieber sat on the stage looking like he had no desire to be there.

And as a Dallas Stars fan, the only player representing the Texas team was Jake Oettinger. He got drafted 10th overall in the draft, it was just a blast to watch him get drafted to Team Matthews. Oh. Wait? We didn’t get to see Oettinger get drafted? Nope. He was drafted during a commercial break and was barely acknowledged at all on the broadcast. LOL.

I am going to help the NHL’s glaring personality problem by coaching up the players to continue to be funny when the cameras are on them. All of the stories that are told on Spittin Chiclets’ podcast should be slightly more accessible than from players that retired 20 years ago. I don’t want to have to wait 20 years to think some of my favorite players to watch are actually funny and not robots. I have no faith to turn Connor McDavid’s personality around, but I think I can work with a number of players to have a better on camera personality.

In other news, we won’t have an NHL All-Star game next year as they are making a Four Nations tournament between the best of Canada, Finland, the United States, and Sweden. And as a cherry on top, the NHL has agreed to let their players play in the Winter Olympics again for the 2026 and 2030 Olympics. Big news for the league that has zero personality.

Either the best or second best player of his generation, Sidney Crosby, completely skipped the NHL All-Star draft. Not one care in the world from these boys to make the sport a bit more marketable to get their big salaries bigger and on par for the 8th man on an NBA team’s salary. SMH.

The NHL has a glaring personality problem, and I am the man to fix it.