Your inbox approves Men's coaches poll Women's coaches poll Play to win 25K!
SPORTS
NHL All-Star Game

Jakub Voracek gets hat trick, bragging rights

Dave Isaac
USA TODAY Sports
Team Toews forward Jakub Voracek scores past Team Foligno goaltender Carey Price.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - For seven years, Philadelphia Flyers right wing Jakub Voracek says he has had to hear it from teammate Claude Giroux.

In 2008, Giroux's junior team beat Voracek's and the Flyers captain hasn't let him forget it.

Sunday, Voracek finally got some bragging rights he can use in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately retort. The NHL's leading scorer was tops in the NHL All-Star Game, too. Somehow, he wasn't even a finalist for MVP.

Columbus' Ryan Johansen, who notched a pair of goals and a pair of assists, won that honor in a fan vote.

Voracek notched a hat trick and trio of assists to tie Mario Lemieux's All-Star record for points in a game.

"I think it's a little different, Voracek and Lemieux, right?" Voracek said. "No, but I had three secondary assists so I wouldn't get too excited about that.

OK, so Voracek was his usual humble self about the points after winning 17-12 in the highest-scoring All-Star Game in NHL history. He was extremely excited to playfully trash talk his Flyers linemate.

"He can have it," Giroux said with a laugh. "It's a lot of fun and that's the whole thing about it.

"He played very well. Like I said, it's a lot of offense and he's got a lot of it. It was fun to watch him play."

Giroux managed a goal and two assists in his own right, half of Voracek's output. Since he was on the home team, any time Giroux's team scored, the infamous cannon on the concourse level was fired at Nationwide Arena.

"I hate the cannon," Giroux said. It gets me every time."

A lot of players echoed that sentiment.

"I was in the West for so long, but I've been familiar with it," said former Anaheim Duck Bobby Ryan, now with Ottawa. "It never gets any easier to hear. I started to get the timing down on it and then at the end they got me when we were all on the ice at the end. That thing's obnoxious, but I know the fans love it."

Voracek was familiar with the cannon from his three seasons in Columbus before being traded to Philadelphia in the summer of 2011. His return to Ohio's capital as a first-time All-Star was rewarding in more ways than one.

"I saw people who I haven't seen forever," Voracek said. "Obviously I still have a lot of friends here. Even at the rink, when I walk in there was a lot of people I know. Hockey-wise, you're around the best players in the world. It's pretty special."

Among them was the man standing behind the bench. Since his Nashville Predators were tops in the league at the time of the announcement, ex-Flyers coach Peter Laviolette was the coach of Voracek's All-Star team.

"It was good, like the old days," Voracek said. "It was fun. He played me a lot, so I was happy."

Now it's back to business, though.

Voracek's Flyers have won two of their last five games and are 12 points out of a playoff spot. The NHL's leading scorer with 56 points has a long road ahead of him if he's going to enjoy himself as much as he did in the city that drafted him.

"The last few days," Voracek said, "have been a lot of the most fun in hockey that I've ever had."

PHOTOS: 2015 NHL All-Star Game

Featured Weekly Ad