Shea Weber wins hardest shot competition again (video)

It wasn’t quite like the blistering winners of the two years prior, but Shea Weber still had plenty to offer in the hardest shot competition Saturday night.

During the traditional Saturday night skills competition at NHL All-Star weekend, the marquee event that even grabs casual fans is generally the hardest-shot competition. Watching some of the NHL’s best players dial up a slap shot unabated is awesome, and who can forget the bald-mulleted Al Iafrate in the early 1990s?

Defenseman Shea Weber won the 2015 and 2016 hardest-shot competitions as a member of the Nashville Predators, including a year ago on his home ice in Nashville, with winning slap shots topping 108 miles per hour each year. Weber was traded to the Montreal Canadiens last offseason, but he was obviously still going to be a must-watch when he was set to dial up his entries in the hardest-shot competition in Los Angeles on Saturday night.

Winnipeg Jets rookie forward Patrik Laine set a top mark of 101.7 MPH, which others that followed him failed to come anywhere close to matching or topping. Then Weber stepped up to the blue line for his turn.

Weber registered a 102.8 MPH winning slap shot, almost effortlessly it seemed, to take home his third straight hardest shot title. It was not record-setting in any way of course, but plenty good enough to win. In fact, Weber’s 102.8 is the slowest shot to win hardest shot competition since Zdeno Chara’s 100.4 MPH winning mark in 2007.

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Weber will surely look to make it four hardest shot titles in a row in 2018, or whenever the next opportunity comes. The status of next year’s NHL All-Star game is in limbo due to uncertainty over if players will participate in the Winter Olympics again. But if there’s an All-Star Game, and a skills competition, Weber will be the clear favorite to win the hardest shot contest again next year.