Eastern All-Stars, Jordan Staal Update

The Eastern Conference All-Star Team, aka Montreal Canadiens, was filled out today. Here is the complete roster: (* denotes fan-selected starters)

Forwards
Evgeni Malkin -- Pittsburgh*
Sidney Crosby -- Pittsburgh*
Alex Kovalev -- Montreal*
Jeff Carter -- Philadelphia
Danny Heatley -- Ottawa
Ilya Kovalchuk -- Atlanta
Alexander Ovechkin -- Washington
Zach Parise -- New Jersey
Marc Savard -- Boston
Eric Staal -- Carolina
Thomas Vanek -- Buffalo
Vincent LeCavalier -- Tampa Bay

Defense
Andrei Markov -- Montreal*
Mike Komisarek -- Montreal*
Jay Bouwmeester -- Florida
Zdeno Chara -- Boston
Thomas Kaberle -- Toronto
Mark Streit -- New York Islanders

Goal
Carey Price -- Montreal*
Henrik Lundqvist -- New York Rangers
Tim Thomas -- Boston

I'm fatigued from railing about the absolutely awful selection process and results for the NHL All Star Game, so I will leave the assault up to you intrepid readers. Go for it!

In other new, Pittsburgh has signed Jordan Stall to a 4-year contract extension, beginning next year. A $16 million package over the term.

Two ways to interpret this news -- either the Penguins are committed to Staal for the long term, and have made this splash now to signal that he is off the market, or potential trading partners were balking at doing a deal for Staal in the last year of his contract, and locking him up removes that obstacle. It should become clear soon which is the case.

More to come later . . .