Where Was I: The All-Star Game Fan Fest

Last night, I attended the All-Star Game Fan Fest at the brand new Ottawa Convention Centre.

The Fan Fest is pretty large, situated over two floors of the Convention Centre (three if you count the entrance area to the event). The bulk of the event is the top floor. All NHL trophies are in a display area, with the mother of them all (the Cup) accessible for people to have their picture taken. There are about 10 skill stations: stickhandling, shooting (precision and strength) and the like. There is an alumni station; Laurie Boschman, Sean Donovan and Yvan Cournoyer were signing autographs when I was there yesterday. A number of broadcasters (e.g., RDS, NHL Network, Sirius-XM) have booths set up to do remote broadcasts. I saw the Bettman and Alfredsson jointly get interviewed by a buxom blonde at the NHL Network set. (Pictured above.)

Team mascots were ambling about, generally getting mauled by children. I spotted nine. My buddy's kids got their pictures taken with 17 (!). Of note, Spartacat and Youppi were MIA.

I had fun, but that can probably be attributed to the fact that I met up with said buddy Tom and his two sons, aged 7 and 4 and a half. They had a blast and that rubbed off on me. I may be a little blasé about these types of events, given that I've seen a slew of them at past Grey Cups.

The event is extremely well organized, with a small army of always helpful and easily identified volunteers patrolling the site. Also, organizers are making an effort to keep the area from getting over-crowded. They were making new entrants line up at some point last night and there was still plenty of room to comfortably move around.

All in all, this is an event worth checking out, especially if you are taking children, who will get a lot out of it.

However, I am left wondering why this is the only public event related to the All-Star Game. I may be applying too much of a Grey Cup lens to this, but I do not understand why there any parties/hospitality suites set up. You would think there are enough Leaf, Bruin and Hab fans in the region for each of those teams to have specific events. The NHLPA also seems to be missing. There probably aren't that many out-of-town fans coming to town for the Game, but there could have been a bit more of a festival approach taken, akin to the GC. Just a random thought...

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