Being chosen as an All-Star is usually a very exciting moment for a professional athlete, unless they already had a nice vacation planned for the All-Star break.
Needless to say, Seattle Kraken forward Oliver Bjorkstrand could have been a little bit more excited when his head coach let him know that he had been selected to the All-star game. The Kraken posted a video of Dave Hakstol bringing his player into his office to inform him of the exciting news, which seemed like it could have been delivered sooner.
The video, which was posted to the Kraken’s social media accounts, opened up with Coach Hakstol asking Bjorkstrand if he had any plans for the All-Star break. As it turns out, the star forward did have some things planned with his wife and kid:
“We’re going to San Diego. Hopefully it’ll be somewhat warm. Get some sun. We just got an Airbnb, so it should be easy with the kid.”
Hakstol nodded his head, and then fired back with:
“Can you change those plans and cancel that Airbnb?”
That questions puzzled Bjorkstrand for a moment, and then laughingly he responded:
“If I can? Yeah, I probably can.”
Dave Hakstol then revealed the exciting news that Bjorkstrand had been selected as an All-Star, meaning the hypothetical question of “could you cancel that Airbnb” quickly turned into a real one:
“You might have to book a flight to Toronto. The All-Star game is in Toronto, and you’ve been chosen as our All-star representative. Change in plans man, change in plans. You’ve earned it, and you deserve it, so congrats.”
Jeez…I think a better reward for him being named an All-Star would have been allowing him to still go to San Diego.
You can imagine why Bjorkstrand wasn’t super pumped that he was going to have to cancel his trip to sunny San Diego and instead fly to gloomy, cold Toronto. Being named an All-Star is cool and all, but judging by this clip (which the marketing and video department probably should have canned), the hockey player was looking forward to some time away.
Take a look:
That’s just brutal to watch.
Bjorkstrand was saying all of the right things when he was told the news, but his face and body language was clearly conveying how he was actually feeling. Social media quickly called him out on it in the reply section of the post, with most of the online commentary sympathizing with the Kraken forward:
He was thinking of beaches and warm weather and instead he got…the great white north of Toronto.
— Kraken Canada (@KrakenCanada) January 5, 2024
You can tell by his calm reaction that he knows his wife is gonna be big mad.
— Randy Treibel (@RandyTreibel) January 5, 2024
Sounds like he’d rather go to San Diego…
— Mitch Lafon (@mitchlafon) January 5, 2024
Visual proof that players don’t care about the all star game.
— Matt (@mwats05) January 5, 2024
if i had just told you about my warm weather vacation plans with my wife and kid and you told me i had to cancel all that and book a flight up north for unpaid overtime i would’ve turned into the joker right then and there 😭
— komi ⭑ (@ihatejyp) January 5, 2024
And funny enough, Bjorkstrand saw the online response to his response and decided to respond (my goal right there was to use the word response/respond as much as possible) with a photoshopped screenshot from the video above showing him smiling as he find out he’s an All-Star:
