KHL skills competition was incredibly weird and awesome

It’s not too often you think to yourself, “hey, NHL, take a page out of the Kontinental Hockey League’s books, would ya?”

January 19, 2019, however, yielded one of those rare, beautiful times.

The KHL is hosting its annual All-Star festivities this weekend and Saturday saw the league’s top players gather for the skills competition — at least I think that’s what this was? Complete with dance-offs, retro buckets, live Lumineers covers, ukuleles, King’s Musketeers, a bunch of other weird stuff and, uhh, more dancing, this skills comp was just wild.

It was absurdly gimmicky and contrived, which is why it fits the vibe of how All-Star weekends should be approached. Bring all your big guns together, have, like, zero structure and just let these personalities do whatever strange things pop into their heads.

Would you rather watch some dude wheel around a bunch of pylons and shoot at an open net, or see Brent Burns put some skates on his antelopes and rip around the ice while throwing shark teeth at some refs? We all know the answer to that. Give the people what the want, NHL.

Any ways, here’s some of the random wild stuff that made Day 1 of the KHL’s showcase weekend so nutty, starting with this impromptu (definitely wasn’t planned) dance routine that broke out during the shootout competition:

Goalie gear nerds and equipment aficionados everywhere can certainly agree that this retro Cooper goalie bucket is a thing of absolute beauty.

How could you not respect this egg protector? The Cooper SK 2000 is what dreams are made of:

To be honest I have no idea what’s going on here:

Or here:

Orrrrrrr here:

And this would appear to be a live cover of, and sing-along to, a widely-popular track from The Lumineers. Just regular, normal, All-Star weekend stuff:

I’m not exactly sure why but I want to go to Russia today a lot more than I did yesterday.

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