Ryan and Salcido named to All Star Classic; Ebbett and Platt snubbed

The American Hockey League has named their rosters for the Canadian and PlanetUSA All-Star teams for the upcoming All-Star Classic at the Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena in Binghamton, New York on January 27-28.

While no Pirates were named to the Canadian team, which is a complete sham in my humble observation, Bobby Ryan was named as a starter for PlanetUSA. He’ll be joined by Brian Salcido, who was also named to the team.

Ryan, just arriving in Portland yesterday morning after taking the red-eye from California, he spent the last nine games with the Ducks. In that span, he scored a pair of goals and assists and certainly didn’t look out of place, but as I said earlier and by his own admission, it was a numbers game.

“There’s just too many guys (in Anaheim),” Ryan said in the Portland Press Herald. “Unfortunately, for (Miller) and I, we’re on two-way (contracts).”

In his time with Portland before being recalled, he excelled, scoring 10 goals, 14 assists in 25 games. He led the AHL in goals among rookies and was second in the rookie-scoring race before being recalled on December 16.

Salcido ranks second in the league in scoring among defenseman (8 goals, 24 assists), only one point behind Manchester’s Peter Harrold. He’s also second in assists among defenseman.

What amounts to no more than a big up yours is the fact that Andrew Ebbett and Geoff Platt were left off the Canadian AHL roster. Both are having solid seasons and they have been at or near the top in several major categories in the AHL.

With that said, how does at least one of these players not get named to the Canadian AHL All-Star team?

Let’s just start with Ebbett and his list of noteworthy stats.

– Ranks sixth in the league scoring with 40 points
– Ranks fourth in assists with 31 assists
– Seventh in PP assists (16)
– Three game-winning goals, Steve Kelly of Houston leads the league with six.
– Second in the league with overtime goals (2)
– He’s been lights out in the shootout, going four-for-five with a .800 shooting percentage.

Those are certainly numbers that are all-star worthy to me.

Geoff Platt numbers aren’t has impressive, but he’s been up their for most of the year, especially since coming over to Portland in a trade where the Anaheim Ducks sent Aaron Rome and Clay Wilson to Columbus.

– Platt is ranked fourth in the league with 20 goals, he’s only three behind league leader Pascal Pelletier, who was named to the All-Star Classic and ironically so was Jeff Tambellini, Brett Sterling, Jason Krog, Brian Boyle and Greg Moore, all in the top-seven among AHL goal-scorers.
– Platt is ranked in the top-20 in AHL scoring (18th) with 35 points (20g, 15a).
– Second in the league with scoring the first goal of the game, the Pirates are 13-5-0-1 when scoring the first goal of the game.
– Second in shot taken on goal (136)

I hope that the league will realize their blunder and name one of these two players as a replacement because it’s unacceptable not to have at least one of these two players not on the Canadian team.

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