NHL All-Star Game
exhibition ice hockey game traditionally midway through the regular season of the National Hockey League
The National Hockey League All-Star Game (French: Match des étoiles de la Ligue nationale de hockey) is an exhibition ice hockey tournament that is traditionally held during the regular season of the National Hockey League (NHL), with many of the League's star players playing against each other. The games' proceeds benefit the pension fund of the players, and the winning team is awarded $1,000,000 towards a charity of their choice.
The NHL All-Star Game, held in late January or early February, marks the symbolic halfway point in the regular season, though not the mathematical halfway point which, for most seasons, is usually one or two weeks earlier. Between 2007 and 2020, it was held in late January. It was skipped in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 to 2024 editions were held on the first Saturday of February. The 2026 All-Star Game was skipped in favor of allowing players to focus on participating in the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Formats
From 1947 to 1968, the All-Star Game primarily saw the previous season's Stanley Cup champions take on a team of All-Stars from the other clubs. There were two exceptions during this period: The 1951 and 1952 games instead featured two teams of All-Star players, one consisting of players on American-based teams and the other with players on Canadian-based teams.
Beginning in 1969, the format was geographic with the Wales/Eastern Conference All-Stars playing the Campbell/Western Conference All-Stars, with the "first team", or starting line, including the starting goaltender, voted in by fans, while the remainder of the teams' rosters are chosen by the NHL's Hockey Operations Department in consultation with the teams' general managers. Since 1996, the head coaches for the two All-Star teams have been the coaches of the two teams that are leading their respective conferences in point percentage (i.e.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “NHL All-Star Game” as exhibition ice hockey game traditionally midway through the regular season of the National Hockey League. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q29144. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “NHL All-Star Game” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.