LAS VEGAS — Dallas Stars center Joe Pavelski stood 35 feet away from his target, staring into the cool air. He slapped the puck with his stick and took a shot. Not at a goalie. Not even at a goal. At a large playing card: the ace of diamonds, which the puck punctured like a dart.
“Ace!” exclaimed Pavelski, taunting the four other NHL players with whom he was competing.
The players were in the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard, which had been shut down for two hours so Joe Pavelski could shoot at a rack of 52 cards with a glowing red puck. The Eiffel Tower was illuminated to their left. The sun slowly set behind the casinos to their right. Showgirls in feathered costumes patrolled the sidewalks.
On Thursday night, the NHL did something it had never done before by staging two All-Star Game skills competitions outdoors: the “Las Vegas NHL 21 in ’22” that shuttered the Vegas Strip for street hockey blackjack, and the “Discover NHL Fountain Face-Off,” in which players traveled by boat to a…
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