Makar, Rantanen win Splash Shot at All-Star Skills

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Cale Makar and Mikko Rantanen won the Enterprise NHL Splash Shot, a special outdoor event filmed Thursday for the 2023 NHL All-Star Skills presented by DraftKings Sportsbook on Friday.

The Colorado Avalanche teammates defeated New York Rangers teammates Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin in the final. Makar hit seven targets and dropped Fox into a dunk tank in 18 seconds. Shesterkin had the same amount of time to try to dunk Rantanen, but he hit five targets before an air horn sounded.

“It was a blast,” Makar said. “I’m still soaking from it, but yeah, it was a lot of fun. I feel like the NHL is doing a good job of trying to come up with new games to bring fans in and stuff like that. It’s definitely a different one, but it was pretty fun.”

The NHL filmed the Splash Shot before a crowd of about 1,600 at the 2023 Truly Hard Seltzer NHL All-Star Beach Festival, an event with fan activities at Fort Lauderdale Beach Park. The video was edited and shown on ESPN and at FLA LIVE Arena during the Skills competition.

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Four pairs of players competed in T-shirts, shorts and swimsuits: Rantanen and Makar; Fox and Shesterkin; Pittsburgh Penguins center Sidney Crosby and Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon; and Ottawa Senators forward Brady Tkachuk and Florida Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk.

The players wore hockey gloves and used hockey sticks to shoot hockey pucks on a synthetic ice rink with the Atlantic Ocean in the background. Shesterkin, a goalie, didn’t wear gloves and used a goalie stick.

Each shooter had to hit six surfboards and then an NHL logo to drop a player from the opposing team into a dunk tank that was 5 feet deep. The team that went first in each bracket set the time the next team had to beat.

In the preliminary round, Fox, a defenseman, dunked Matthew Tkachuk in 26 seconds, and Brady Tkachuk failed to dunk Shesterkin in time. Then Rantanen dunked Crosby in 25 seconds, and MacKinnon failed to dunk Makar in time. Shesterkin and Makar each hopped into the dunk tank, anyway, to cool off on the sunny, 80-degree day.

In the final, Makar went first and struggled to knock down the surfboards to the right of the dunk tanks. The NHL determined the surfboards to the right weren’t falling as easily as the ones on the left, so it had Makar redo the round.

“We were ripping it at the other side,” said Makar, a defenseman. “I think it might have had something to do with the wind. The tanks were maybe blocking [the wind on] other side.”

Shesterkin also shot on the left side in the final. He hit four surfboards before time ran out. After the crowd chanted for him to dunk Rantanen, anyway, he hit the last surfboard and the NHL logo, and the forward splashed into the tank.

“Certain things happen [even though] you plan,” NHL chief content officer Steve Mayer said. “We were super surprised. We weren’t sure exactly why we had some problems on this end, but we made a good decision for the final to go on one side, and it was fun.”