All-star games in any of the major North American sports have always been more sizzle than steak and therefore should not be taken too seriously but did the ridiculous outcome from the fan voting for the upcoming 2012 NHL All-Star Game in Ottawa cross the line (again)? Before this NHL season started the Ottawa Senators were generally thought to be a bottom 5 team with most believing they would be fighting for the right to pick first overall in the June Entry Draft. However, we are approaching the halfway mark of the season and the young Senators are overachieving and are actually fighting for a playoff spot instead of chasing futility (at this moment, they actually hold a playoff spot 5th overall in the Eastern Conference). The Senators are a nice story and you can somewhat forgive their fans for getting excited about their team but did their hometown votes discredit the already arguably trivial marketing machine that is the NHL All-Star Game?
Yesterday we learned that four Ottawa Senators were voted starters for the 2012 NHL All-Star Game. (side note: Somehow Tim Thomas and Dion Phaneuf made the starting lineup as well. Thomas deserves the starting gig and was probably helped by the fact that Ottawa's goalie Craig Anderson has been mediocre at best this season. On the other hand, Dion is a borderline all-star and was almost overtaken by Ottawa defenceman Sergei Gonchar.) Ottawa defenceman Erik Karlsson led all vote-getters in fan balloting, and captain Daniel Alfredsson and fellow forwards Milan Michalek and Jason Spezza were also elected for the game on January 29th. Mediocrity may have hurt Anderson's chances of being voted onto the all-star team but it sure did not affect Alfredsson's. Spezza and Karlsson are at least borderline defensible picks but how can anybody justify the Ottawa captain leading all forwards in fan voting even though he is 68th in league scoring? Furthermore, none of the top ten scorers in the NHL were actually voted into the game by the fans.
Ottawa is not even the first city to stuff the balloting with their own players as Montreal did it in 2009 when they voted four Canadiens into the game (Carey Price, Mark Komisarek, Andrei Markov and Alexei Kovalev). At this point, instead of the current Eastern vs Western Conference format, if the home city so desperately wants to watch their own players in an all-star game shouldn't the NHL at least consider having the home team play an all-star team (or even go back to the more fun old format of the Stanley Cup champions versus an all-star team)?
If people were somehow still unaware, Ottawa just reminded us that fan voting has become a farce. The big issue with the hometown spam voting is that it might be fun for 20,000 Senators fans to cheer for their own players (which they get to do 41 other times at home during the regular season) but for the rest of league it makes the whole process look like a bad joke. Whatever credibility the current system has of encouraging fans to vote the best players into the game has gone out the window. Sure fans can vote for whomever they want, I just do not understand why Senators' fans would want to watch their own team start in an all-star game? They see their own players 41 times in Ottawa and 82 times on television; you would think for one night that they surely would want a chance to watch the league's other talented players?
I generally agree with the argument that the rest of the league could have also voted so Ottawa is not totally at fault. It follows that if you did not want four Senators in the game then you should have voted otherwise. I guess my problem with that argument is that I want to expect more from the host city. Historically the majority of votes for an all-star game come from the host city and I kind of think that the host city has a responsibility to the rest of the league not to be stupid. It's like the dad who manages little league baseball and could choose to let his crappy son pitch in the championship game or he can think about the rest of the team and choose to let the good pitcher throw instead. The tickets were going to sell out regardless of whether Alfredsson was in the starting lineup; on the other hand, Alfredsson's attendance does not help with public interest in the game. Quite simply, a guy like Alfredsson is taking the spot of a more worthy candidate.
I have not watched an NHL All-Star Game since Gretzky vs Lemieux was taking place on the ice in the old Campbell vs Wales Conference games back when I was a little kid so this voting fiasco did not really lose a viewer in me. Let's just chalk this rant up to me needing something to complain about. However, I do believe that the hometown spam voting has helped turn the NHL All-Star Game more into a farce than it may already have been and depending on how much you care about the game that could be detrimental to the league's public perception. What this year's voting does seem to prove to me is that the only people who actually care about the all-star game are the people whose city it is in.
