San Jose, CA – In a high-paced competition highlighting the best players in the American Hockey League (AHL), the Western Conference narrowly defeated the Eastern Conference 18-13 in the 2024 AHL All-Star Skills Competition. The event, held Sunday evening at Tech CU Arena, saw Ontario Reign rookie Brandt Clarke and Iowa Wild goaltender Jesper Wallstedt lead their team to assured victory.
Underlying the event were the players not able to attend due to travel issues and delays, including the host San Jose Barracuda’s Shakir Mukhamadullin.
Inglasco Puck Control Relay
The Western Conference took an early lead thanks to a 3-1 result in the Puck Control Relay. In this event, three skaters from each division faced off, with the fastest group taking home the heat’s single point. For the final two heats, the skaters went one-on-one to decide the victors.
Brennan Othmann, Logan Mailloux, and Ruslan Iskhakov narrowly defeated the Western Conference contingent in heat one. However, the West’s Ryker Evans, Mavrik Bourque, and Logan Stankoven struck back in heat two.
The first event was capped off by a sweep in the single-skater heats, highlighted by Brandt Clarke’s technical defeat of older brother Graeme Clarke.
A sliding puck and a tumbling pylon resulted in a “course violation,” which handed the narrow victory from the hands of Graeme to his sibling Brandt and the West.
After the evening’s events, Brandt spoke with The Calder Times and shared his feelings on participating against his brother:
“Yeah, it’s really special. Both teams have talented players, so for us both to get picked is special. A moment we’ll remember for sure.”
Brandt Clarke
CCM Fastest Skater
In a game that seems to be getting faster by the year, it’s no surprise that all but one skater turned in sub-14-second times in this year’s Fastest Skater competition. The rules are simple- skate one lap around the rink outside of the pylons. The fastest skater wins a point. The fastest average team time also gets a point.
It’s also no surprise that last year’s winner (and current event record holder with a 12.915 lap time) took top honors again.
The Hershey Bears’ Ethen Frank won his second consecutive CCM Fastest Skater event with a blistering time of 13.032 seconds. That’s good enough for the second-best time in event history!
AHLTV Rapid Fire
In the AHLTV Rapid Fire competition, the goaltenders finally had their chance to shine. The AHL’s top netminders in Dennis Hildeby, Yaroslav Askarov, Clay Stevenson, Dustin Wolf, Jet Greaves, Jesper Wallstedt, Joel Blomqvist, and Matthew Villalta each faced off against two skaters from the opposing conference to see who could make the most saves.
The Eastern Conference’s Jet Greaves led the way, making nine saves against Grigori Denisenko and Nic Petan.
Wallstedt finished in second place, stopping eight shots by Dylan McIlrath and Graeme Clarke.
The Eastern Conference victory brought the score to 4-3 in favor of the Western Conference.
CCM Hardest Shot
Tufte won the CCM Hardest Shot competition with a blast clocked at 100.9 miles per hour, one-tenth of a second better than Hershey Bears captain Dylan McIlrath.
Dylan McIlrath was a late addition to this event, replacing one of the players who was unable to make the event due to inclement weather, but possibly he should have been in the running from the beginning, as he was one of two players to end up with an above 100mph result. The East would take a point for having the harder average shot, but Tufte would keep the West ahead 5-4 with his rocket.
Sharks Ice Accuracy Shooting
Clarke became the fifth AHL player ever to hit four targets in four attempts in the Sharks Ice Accuracy Shooting event, showing his blistering shot with no fuss. He fully disintegrated two of the styrofoam puck targets, and turned the boos during his introduction into cheers, as he helped the West to two more points, increasing their lead to 7-4.
Other notable attempts belong to Trey Fix Wolansky and Riley Tufte, who both got four targets in six attempts.
Devcon Pass and Score
This was a fun event. Teams of three players would skate into the zone with a puck, and all three players had to touch the puck before it could be shot. It’s a goalie’s nightmare to face endless 3 on 0’s, but there were some stand-out performances from Dennis Hildeby and Matthew Villalta, who both pitched shutouts in the event.
On the other end, it was goals galore for Brennan Othmann, Dylan Coghlan and Gage Goncalves, who went three for three against Dustin Wolf
Upper Deck Breakaway Relay
Usually a shootout highlight reel is an incredible goal. Not so last night at the ASC, as goalie Yaroslavl Askarov went full chaos with a diving poke-check on his third shooter, ending with his blocker and stick halfway to the neutral zone. He made a save on the fourth shooter with one hand behind his back, but finally conceded to Mac Hollowell with his blocker returned but no stick.
The Breakaway Challenge was the goalie show once again, as only ten goals were scored on 40 shots. Clean-sheets went to Greaves, Wallstedt and Wolf, and both Askarov and Hildeby only allowed one goal on five attempts.
Partway through the Breakaways, the guest of honour arrived! Shakir Mukhamadullin, delayed on his flight home from Vancouver, raced to get into his gear and end the event, and he did so in style, with a beautiful backhand move on goalie Joel Blomqvist.
“It’s not my number one move, but because it’s [the] All-Star Game, I do something different. […] I got lucky.”
Mukhamadullin on his shootout success
Mascot Madness
The Mascots were doing their best to steal the show last night, and two of them got closer than any other. Tux the Penguin, from WBS, was standing on the boards during introductions and generally being a menace, before trying to attack Fuego from Coachella Valley with a chair during a Mascot Dance-Off.
The Mascot MVP for me though was Griff the Griffin from Grand Rapids, who’s showstealing trick was launching t-shirts not only into the crowd, but ACROSS THE ICE SURFACE.
Maybe the Detroit Lions could sign Griff next season!
Quote of the Night
Clarke on getting booed during his introduction: “I kind of almost forgot about the rivalry for a second. I was like, oh what did I do? I was like, oh, the LA-San Jose stuff. So yeah, fair enough.”
MVP Performances
Jesper Wallstedt of the Iowa Wild and Jet Greaves of the Cleveland Monsters shared CCM Top Goaltender honors by stopping 15 of 18 shots each over three goaltending events.
Awards also went to Ethen Frank for his fastest skater performance, Brandt Clarke for his accuracy shooting win, Riley Tufte for his hardest shot, and Rocco Grimaldi accepted the trophy for the Western Conference’s 18-13 win over the East.
The 2024 AHL All-Star Classic presented by Tech CU continues on Monday with the AHL Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Ceremony at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, featuring the enshrinement of Dennis Bonvie, Gordie Clark, Gerry Ehman, and Roy Sommer, and also celebrating honorary All-Star Classic captains Dan Boyle and Wayne Thomas. The ceremony will be streamed live on AHLTV.
The league’s mid-season showcase wraps up Monday night at 9 ET/6 PT with the 2024 AHL All-Star Challenge, a round-robin tournament among the league’s four divisions played at 3-on-3. The All-Star Challenge will air live across the United States on NHL Network, across Canada on TSN2, and on the internet at AHLTV.
Photo credit: Maddie Dutra
