Islanders News: I did not achieve this position in life by having some snot-nosed punk leave my cheese out in the wind.

Well, that was fun - all except for the part where John Tavares got jobbed out of the NHL All Star MVP award. Hell, even Jakub Voracek deserved it over hometown guy Ryan Johansen. Ah well. Tavares has his sights on much bigger awards.

Islanders notes

• Not a bad night for Joshua Ho-Sang; three goals and two assists in Niagara's win over Barrie. [St Catharines Standard]
• The NY Times takes a trip up to Connecticut to see what's going on with the Islanders' AHL affiliate.
• The Islanders-Rivalry is heating up again. [Wall Street Journal]
  
• Chris King stops by the IslesBlog podcast.
• That odd feeling where "silence" could be okay for the Isles this trade deadline. [Altar of Bossy]
• Islanders passing stats through 46 games. More Boychuk-Leddy dynamite. [FanPost]
• Tonight is the AHL All Star spectacular and Aaron Ness took part in Sunday's skills competition. [Soundin' Off]

All Star Gametime

• Shockingly, the All Star Game was a high-scoring one. Team Toews beat Team Foligno 17-12, with our own captain scoring four goals. Jaroslav Halak allowed four goals in his one period of action, but so did Team Toews' other two goalies. [LHH recap | Newsday | Islanders | NY Post]
  
• The Daily News called the game, "dreary," but Tavares and Rick Nash were on top of things.
  
• And no, Tavares didn't win the MVP, but Johansen's win is quite a turnaround from where his season started. [PHT]
• Best part of the game was Alex Ovechkin starting a "scrum" that had everyone laughing. [SB Nation]
• So why did Ovechkin campaign so hard to be the last man picked at the Fantasy Draft? Because he wanted to donate the car he would have won to a Virgina-based hockey team for special needs kids. Honda found out and gave him a car anyway. [NHL.com]
• Kevin Shattenkirk's memento of his first All Star game is gone, thanks to Roberto Luongo. [SB Nation]
• Zemgus Girgensons made it to Columbus thanks to the fan voting, but once there had a bit of a crisis of confidence. [Puck Daddy]
• The real MVP: Darryl Sutter's son Chris. [Puck Daddy]
  

Last thing(s)

• Yesterday was also the KHL All Star Game. The East beat the West 18-16 and names like Sergei Kostitsyn, Matt Gilroy and Wojtek Wolski were involved. [KHL.ru]
  
• AHL West is coming, with five teams set to play in California next season. [Democrat and Chronicle]