1998 NHL All-Star Skills Competition

[JeffB]

I love to put patches on my jerseys whenever I can, so when I made a recent discovery that I found pretty cool, I thought I better share it.

1998 was the first year of the "World vs. North America" All-Star game format. The players in the All-Star Game Skills Competition all wore their normal dark (North Americans) or light (World players) jerseys for the club teams they played for, but each player had his home countries flag added to their jersey for the one and only time. They did not repeat this the following years of the W vs. NA format.

This is the ONLY patch I've ever seen added to a Gretzky Rangers jersey. It's also a cool addition to the Canucks jerseys since they were the host team and already had a patch on their chest and had to move the flag patches to the shoulder.

Here's a link to who played in the game that year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/48th_National...e_All-Star_Game

JeffB

[LordStanley1893]

Those look cool. I think the shootout should be like the skills comp and have the skaters not use helmets if would give more identification of players among fans.

[Brilliant!]

Wow I remember those jerseys. Those really were great looking. That was also the first year Vancouver went to the totem pole jersey. I can remember wanting one of the Brian Leetch jerseys with both the 'C' and the American flag on the shoulder.