Sports

NHL applauded for All-Star game switch

PICK ME, BRO: If Eric Staal (above) gets to pick an NHL All-Star team, will he select brother Marc? (AP)

When it comes to base ball’s All-Star Game, they try to tell you that “it counts,” even though no one in either starting lineup remained in last year’s game past the sixth inning.

In hockey, they are telling you that the All-Star Game doesn’t count at all, which seems a far more refreshing and honest approach.

The NHL’s choose-up game in Raleigh on Jan. 30 might fall flat, but, really, so what? All-Star Games are largely anachronisms, anyway, and serve in all sports primarily as backdrops for meet-and-greet functions for corporate sponsors and as entertainment vehicles for fans who buy tickets to the myriad events surrounding the match.

Here’s a little secret about NHL All-Star Games — regardless of how they translate over television, which is to say not too well at all, they’re always reasonably entertaining in person, which is all that matters to the people in the arena who pay the freight.

We all know what the NHL is doing here in allowing team lettermen (captains and alternates, two forwards and one defenseman per squad) to choose sides in a televised Friday evening/night draft is a gimmick, but it’s one I’ve warmed up to over the last few days after initially dismissing it on Twitter, because, really, why not?

Better this kind of a gimmick that baseball’s, where World Series home-field advantage is determined by subs in an exhibition game. Better this kind of gimmick than the shootout in NHL regular-season games.

One of the captains will assuredly be host Carolina’s Eric Staal. If the Rangers’ Marc Staal should elevate his game and be named by hockey operations as an All-Star, we’ll get to find out whether the older brother picks the younger for Team Staal, which will make for the kind of fun intrigue that should make the choose-up routine watchable.

You’d hope that the league and the players would be intuitive enough not to name either Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin as a letterman so that both would be on the board and eligible for drafting, and what a kick it would be if neither is selected through the first few rounds.

You’d hope that the NHLPA wouldn’t object to a last-man standing scenario, because at one point just about every single one of us who ever laced up skates or picked up a baseball bat or played flag football or took a 15-foot jumper was in that position and would be able to identify.

Maybe one team’s captains will go the friendship (or family) route. Maybe one team’s captains will attempt to load up on players whose individual talents would dominate the skills competitions on Saturday that will feature a fair amount of head-to-head competition rather than competition primarily against a clock.

And maybe Friday’s choose-up draft will get more notice than Sunday’s game, but doesn’t baseball’s Monday Home Run Derby attract more attention than Tuesday’s game? And what exactly would be the harm?

This represents only a first step in the evolution of All Star Games. You can be sure that some league will explore going to an interactive format for choosing All-Stars and All-Star rosters and lineups, that real-time drafts will be held via the Internet while streamed and/or televised, and maybe even fans would be chosen to be on coaching staffs.

You can be sure that some league will explore it, and it would be a surprise if the NHL were not that league.

The Winter Classic was no sure thing as a stand-alone NHL game on New Year’s Day, not when the Legends Game featuring Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Guy Lafleur and Larry Robinson was the most memorable part of the 2003 Heritage Classic in Edmonton, but the league has made it work.

When you’re the NHL, risks are measured by potential reward. When it’s an All-Star Game, there is no risk other than in pretending the event is something that it cannot and can never be.

If Jonathan Toews is captain, does he want Patrick Kane? Who’s got Zdeno Chara? Will Marc be on Team Staal or not?

Baseball tells you that its game counts. Hockey is telling you that its game doesn’t count at all. There’s nothing at all not to like about that.

The stench created by the Hall of Fame’s secret selection process that snubbed Pat Burns last year following years of odiously denying Fred Shero entry has not gone away and will not go away until the procedure is changed.

Confidentiality agreements signed by the 18 members of the panel that operates without accountability or transparency? What are they hiding, other than an illegitimate process that allows grudges to determine the outcome of the vote?

Wouldn’t you think the Devils would have more to worry about than adjusting their players’ sleeves on the bench so that they all fall to the exact same part of the gloves?

Finally, we are all being reminded of how well Brian Burke does as a GM when he doesn’t inherit a team with Scott Niedermayer‘s brother.

larry.brooks@nypost.com