The mood was light for the Canadiens yesterday, the loss to the Flyers had not dampened their spirits and it's understandable considering that they still banked 6 out of a possible 8 points last week. The Habs will not have any representative at the NHL All-Star Game this coming weekend so on the NFL championship Sunday, they had a local version of the All-Star weekend skills contests the following events were on deck:
Even though a massive snowstorm hit Montreal from Saturday night all the way through Sunday, 12 000 fans showed up to the Bell Centre for the event. Of course, one has to admit that there was probably no need to hold a contest to know who has the hardest shot amongst Habs players, I mean you can just catch one game and you'll soon know that the Captain has the best slapper. In fact, it's pretty much general knowledge since he won that competition at the All-Star weekend in the past (3 times, including a whooping 108.5 mph once, just 0.3 mph less than Zdeno Chara's record). Yesterday though, his winning shot was 103 mph and Jeff Petry tried his best to give him a run for his money with a 102 mph shot. I used to love that contest when I was a kid and it featured the likes of Al Iafrate and Al McInnis. Needless to say that shots are harder these days but back then, I guess I was easier to impress.
As for the fastest skater contest, well, that one was pretty obvious too. How many of us have not see Paul Byron turn on the jets to fly on a breakaway, score shorthanded goals or just back check? His lap time was 13.68 seconds and Matthew Peca was second with a 14.062 seconds, closely followed by Victor Mete with a 14.175 seconds. It's worth mentioning though that Byron didn't come close to breaking the record set by Dylan Larkin in 2016.
Tomas Tatar then showed that he's as accurate as can be hitting the 4 targets on 4 consecutive shots in 8.4 seconds. The current record holder in this event is Daniel Sedin who hit the 4 targets in 4 shots in only 7.3 seconds. To be that event will always be the Raymond Bourque event, even though back in the days it wasn't clocked, all you had to do was hit the 4 targets. From 1990 to 2001, Bourque won the event 8 times which is quite impressive...I'll even confess that along with Patrice Bergeron, he's one of the extremely rare Bruins players I ever liked. Check out this video of when he won the event back in 1993:
Joel Armia claimed the win in the long shooting accuracy and Jesperi Kotkaniemi demonstrated just how skillful he is in the continuous shootout contest:
The Canadiens had the day off today and will be back at practice tomorrow in Brossard in readiness of their match-up with the Coyotes on Wednesday night at the Bell Centre. We'll probably find out if Carey Price will serve his "suspension" for refusing to attend the All-Star weekend in the game against the Coyotes or against the Devils on February 2nd.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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