The Utica Comets have been chosen to host the 2018 AHL All-Star Classic.

It’ll present Vancouver’s AHL affiliate a chance to showcase their new facilities at the newly renovated and renamed Adirondack Bank Center at the Utica Memorial Auditorium in downtown Utica.

The event will take place across two days, through January 28-29, 2018, keeping the same format as last year.
The Skills Competition on day one and the All-Star Challenge the following evening, in which the league’s all-stars will be divided into four teams, representing each of the league’s divisions (Atlantic, North, Central, Pacific), and the teams will participate in a round-robin 3-on-3 tournament featuring six games of 10 minutes each. The two teams with the best records at the end of the round-robin will face off for the championship in a final six-minute game.

This will be the twelfth straight occasion a team based in the East has been chosen for the American Hockey League to showcase it’s best talent. You have to go back as far as 2006 to find when the original Manitoba Moose hosted the event, thus marking a sea change in the AHL’s thinking.

Only in existence for four seasons, this is the first time that Utica have hosted the All-Star classic but they are no strangers to coping with such events having made the Calder Cup Final in 2015.

Tickets for the 2018 AHL All-Star Classic presented by Turning Stone Resort Casino are priced at $39, $49, $69, $89 and $99, and include admission to both the Skills Competition on Jan. 28 and the All-Star Challenge on Jan. 29. Utica Comets season-ticket holders will have an opportunity to reserve their seats beginning Oct. 23; remaining tickets will go on sale to the public on Nov. 4 at 10 a.m. ET (in person) and noon ET (online).