O ne of these days, the NHL is going to get this all-star thing right, mainly because it's pretty much run out of ways to get it wrong.

That was all too evident Saturday night during the skills competition, when once again the league turned what could have been a triumph into another head-scratcher.

The highlight should have been the breakaway competition, which featured the league's most talented scorers trying to outdo each other with creative attempts at scoring.

But those prospects pretty much went out the window when organizers decided to employ a local junior goaltender in a lame attempt to make the stars look good. That backfired when the kid managed to get in the way of most of the shots, even though he told CBC later that he'd been instructed to take it easy.

Don Cherry had it right last night when he chided the league for turning the event into a farce. ``Use your brain," he thundered, aiming his words at whoever had come up with this brainstorm.

There were some great attempts at creativity, but what separated this from the NBA's slam-dunk contest was one thing: the basketball players make the baskets.

The sad thing was that it was another wasted opportunity to exploit the talents of league's most charismatic and skilled player: Alexander Ovechkin.

The highlight of the event was the sight of the Washington sniper clowning around by donning a silly hat and glasses while carrying two sticks. It was more Three Stooges than Bobby Orr.

That may have been the weekend's biggest missed opportunity. As he showed Saturday, the effervescent Ovechkin is the star the league should be hitching its wagon to, not Sidney Crosby.

Ovechkin is as outgoing an athlete as there is, but not in a Sean Avery way. He's out front without being in your face. Last night, every time he touched the puck there was a notable buzz in the crowd at Montreal's Bell Centre.

Crosby appears to be a nice young man who may even have more potential than Ovechkin on the ice. But as he demonstrated in a CBC interview Saturday, off the ice he's about as charismatic as a pylon.

As for the game itself, the NHL can't really do much about tarting up a game that's basically a fun skate.

But surely there's got to be something it can do about the fact the most interesting thing last night was trying to predict the number of times NHL commissioner Gary Bettman would touch host Ron MacLean's forearm during their annual intermission interview.

For the record, it was four, and there was no evidence that MacLean checked afterward to see if his watch was missing.

czelkovich@thestar.ca