RALEIGH — International play will remain a fixture of the NHL midseason as the NHL and NHL Players’ Association have finalized a globally oriented format for the 2027 All-Star Game at UBS Arena in New York.
Speaking before Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Hurricanes and Golden Knights, the league and union detailed the structure for the midseason showcase. The specific elements include:
- A skills competition on Fri., Feb. 5, that will include 10 players (aged 25 or younger), competing in established events such as fastest skater, hardest shot, passing challenge, one-timers, stick handling, and accuracy shooting. The focus on younger players leans into an obvious league goal of promoting the emerging youth wave helping transform the sport. The host team Islanders said that their 18-year-old phenom, Calder Trophy winner Matthew Schaefer, is slated to be one of the 10 players.
- A three-on-three round-robin tournament on Sat., Feb. 6, involving teams with players hailing from the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and Finland, and a fifth team involving players from the rest of the world. The winning team will claim a $2 million prize.
The structure of that latter event has direct echoes of the wildly successful 4 Nations Face-Off last year, and acts as a bridge between Olympic participation every four years, and a revived World Cup of Hockey that is also targeted for a quadrennial rotation beginning in 2028.
The run of mini-games that will be part of this NHL All-Star Game tournament also bears some similarity to the restructured format for this year’s NBA All-Star Game.
“We know there have been fits and starts on this, but we think that, together, we’ve figured this out,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Tuesday.
Resolving the Drama
The news of this event format brings some closure to two outstanding issues.
The first is bringing back an All-Star Game of full weight to UBS Arena, originally slated to be the host of the 2026 All-Star Game. That event was previously downgraded to an Olympics send-off event once NHL player participation in the Milan-Cortino Olympics was finalized—a format change that angered New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. The NHL then canceled it altogether and instead gave the Islanders the 2027 All-Star Game.
Islanders president of business operations Kelly Cheeseman, however, said the ultimate outcome will be worth the wait.
“With [neighboring] Belmont Park reopening this fall, this is another new beginning for the arena and the area, and it’s going to be a great event,” Cheeseman told Front Office Sports.
UBS Arena opened in November 2021.
Russian players, meanwhile, will be part of the Rest of the World team, following a recent ruling from the IIHF that participation from that country in international hockey events will now be handled on a case-by-case basis.
