Did Jon Hamm ruin Trevor Zegras's all-star moment?

With one chance, Trevor Zegras pulled off the spectacular at the NHL all-star skills competition. And yet, a famous actor had to involve himself and ruin it.

Video Transcript

JULIAN MCKENZIE: So I didn't pay attention as much in depth to the skills competition compared to the actual All-Star game, but the biggest thing that stands out to me-- you were going through all the different names for all the different competitions, and you didn't mention the guy who probably has the most enduring image of that entire competition and somehow didn't win his event, the breakaway challenge.

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: I didn't even mention Pietrangelo because of what you're going to say right now.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Trevor Zegras was dead robbed. This dude found a way to pull off something incredible in the competition and didn't win. These events, we see them live on Twitter. We'll see them clipped, and people will share them, and they'll go viral and whatever.

And then, obviously, Trevor Zegras people wilded out over that. As someone who did not watch the All-Star competition night in full depth, full in depth, I haven't seen anything of Alex Pietrangelo's attempt, truthfully, as we talk right now.

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: Honestly, it was the worst. It was the worst part of the entire weekend for me.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: But why did he win?

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: It was so cringe, man.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Why did he win then?

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: Well, Jon Hamm. So Jon Hamm is one of the judges. Darren Waller was a judge. I'm not going to be able to rhyme off all of them, but Darren Waller was there. Jon Hamm was there. Mark Messier among the notable ones there, and Jon Hamm was making it about-- he was hamming it up.

He was being Jon Hamm. He was making it about Jon Hamm, and he gave Pietrangelo a 19. He held up a one and a nine. Yeah, one and a nine. I was going to say the ten, but cut off the 10, but one and a nine that was available to him to make it 19 to give him the victory, and he said it was because he helped the St. Louis Blues, who he's a fan of--

JULIAN MCKENZIE: I swear to God.

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: --win the Stanley Cup in 2019. So Jon Hamm ruined an All-Star moment for Trevor Zegras by himself. There were some really good elements of this. We're going to get into Zegras in a second, but there were also little things that kind of took away from what could have been really good. You mentioned the offside review. The games were actually pretty good.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: They were good.

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: The games we actually decent, and then they stopped the game to have offside review to break out the film so that they could figure out if Nazem Kadri was a millimeter offside. That's so unnecessary unless you're being self-deprecating about it, which the NHL, of course, cannot capture that tone.

Yeah, there was just a little thing wrong with everything, and Trevor Zegras provided the moment of All-Star weekend. We discussed how you got to get him there, and they did get him there. They figured that piece out. He should have been the [INAUDIBLE].

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Yes.

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: You see some of that stuff in the game. Why wouldn't you want to do that? But Trevor Zegras had one shot, one moment, to do this incredible thing. I don't know if he was really blindfolded or not, if he could really see. I don't know.

But he had one opportunity to do this, and he provided, maybe, the greatest All-Star highlight ever. It was the perfect highlight. The dodge balls were late to get to him, but they were floating in the air while he was doing this, and the goaltender, I want to give him credit too, Wyatt Russell I think his name is.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Yeah, yeah, Wyatt Russell.

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: I'm not going to say he could have stopped it, but he played that perfectly to make it look good. And he gave Trevor Zegras that piece of the net to hit. Zegras executed it perfectly. It was absolutely stunning to watch, the perfect highlight that will live on forever.

And yet, you don't have him celebrating because Jon Hamm tried to make it about himself. And Pietrangelo's attempt in that was the cringiest moment of the entire weekend, like, it was so, so bad and so embarrassing. And it was such a good event up until that point, and they completely ruined it.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: I never watched "Mad Men", but I've never wanted to root against Jon Hamm so badly. How dare you put yourself into all of this. Also, I get it. We're going off on an All-Star competition that doesn't really matter, but in the interest of having fun and making it a fun event, what are you doing. No. I probably will never see the Alex Pietrangelo attempt, whatever it was.

The only thing that Trevor Zegras was really missing in his attempt is a wrench, because "Dodgeball" has shown us, the movie, if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball, but that's just me being extremely nitpicky. It was cool. It was fun.

Trevor Zegras, whether he likes it or not, is the face of the NHL that we want, which is super fun, super skilled, and not taking itself so seriously. And there are people, whether they work for the league or people like Jon Hamm, who will find ways to take away from it.

In fact, you could really say that Jon Hamm putting up the one nine for Alex Pietrangelo is perfect symbolism or like a microcosm of the struggle that the NHL has in terms of letting the young players that are really cool that we want to see win not getting their shine because the old guard, what's tried and true in the league, always stands the test of time. You could argue there's a case that Jon Hamm's actions are reflective of what the NHL is.

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: I mean, they don't have many options, right? They roll Jon Hamm out any chance they get because he's a big name who likes hockey. That's really what it comes down to, and there were other cool things. Getting Darren Waller there was cool. Derek Carr was a part of that event.

A lot of that event was really, really fun. I want to give the people who participated in that all the credit in the world, Kaprizov. It wasn't perfect. If they could do it again, they probably would because he blew past the guy who was trying to interview him. But paying homage to Ovi, doing the stick thing, that was a great little--

JULIAN MCKENZIE: I liked that.

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: That was a great part of the event. And Jack Hughes, I want to give him credit as well. He might have been my MVP of the entire weekend. What he did with the magic trick and working with people to make sure that they do something cool. The Jack Hughes thing was awesome. It was awesome. The stick throw into the seats with mini Jack, like, it was so, so good.

And Zegras, again, unbelievable. Everything about that was just phenomenal. The fact that he did it in that pressure moment and came up with that highlight, phenomenal, but then you bring in a guy like Pietrangelo who has no personality at all, has wires on his jersey.

You don't even know what he's trying to do. You don't see the wires. You see the drum band come out after he had this initial attempt that didn't stick at all. It was like, what was that. And then all of a sudden, he wins because he came in, did nothing on his breakaway except skate through a drum line with Vegas, and he won the event.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Are we going to look back at that?

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: They wanted a Vegas guy there. They wanted a Vegas guy to win, I guess, but you were so close to having a really, really perfect execution of something that you cannot have-- you haven't been able to do ever, historically. This has been the one thing, and they ruined it. It was amazing. Oh.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Are we going to look back at that, whatever Alex Pietrangelo did, as the worst moment in NHL All-Star history?

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: It was terrible.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: I think there's a case.

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: I felt bad for him. What's that when you feel bad for someone, you're watching someone do something and you have like-- I don't know if it's guilt. What is it? I don't know what the right word is, but I felt embarrassed for him. I was like, oh, my God, dude, this is the worst thing ever.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: It's like a car crash you can't look away from.

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: Second-hand embarrassment is what it is. Yeah. It was so bad.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Second-hand embarrassment.

JUSTIN CUTHBERT: I'm so envious of the fact that you didn't watch that live and don't have to [INAUDIBLE]. It was so bad.