NHL Players Agree: NHL All-Star Voting is Ridiculous

The NHL has put up "Decision '09," a blog that details the NHL All-Star Game Balloting.

The site is meant to draw enthusiasm and bring interest to the NHL All-Star voting.

However, all it does is show the fans exactly how ridiculous the voting is.

The blog has several posts that include interviews with NHL players. The players talk about the game and then each of them list who they think deserves to be on the team. Of course, who deserves to be on the team and who is actually making the team are different things.

All the NHL's All-Star Game blog succeeds at doing is showing the world that deserving players are not making the team.

For example:

"Right away, I think you have to have Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin on that team...They're the three best young forwards in the NHL right now and Crosby won the Art Ross and Hart Trophies the year before last. Ovechkin won the Art Ross and Hart Trophies last year. Malkin has been playing great all year." - Phil Kessel

The problem is that, due to fan voting, Ovechkin is no where close to making the starting line-up. He currently sits in sixth place, over 40,000 votes away from starting the game.

"Obviously, you've got to put Alexander Ovechkin on your first team. Put him at the left wing because I want to put the Philadelphia Flyers Jeff Carter on the right wing. He's leading the NHL in goals so I guess you have to pick him." - Ian White

Again, Ovechkin is far from being selected to the starting line-up and Jeff Carter is not even in the top ten. Carter has just over 30,000 votes. He is over 100,000 votes behind Thomas Vanek for tenth place in voting among Eastern Conference forwards.

"Shea Weber has done a nice job over there in Nashville, so maybe he deserves to go." - Dan Boyle

We're sorry, but Shea Weber is almost 40,000 votes away from being voted in. Dan Boyle himself needs almost 20,000 votes to make the Western Conference starting line-up.


The NHL's own blog points out that the best players, players who would be chosen by their peers to start the game, will not be in the starting line-up due to the ridiculousness of fan voting.

Of course, the blog also picks up on one of the most bizarre aspects of the voting.

"Amazingly, Pittsburgh's Sergei Gonchar and Ryan Whiney sit at No. 3 and No. 4 in Eastern Conference voting despite not playing yet this year. Gonchar, injured in the exhibition season and out until after the All-Star Game, is just 150,000 votes behind second-place Mike Komisarek of Montreal.

Whitney, who has been out since before training camp, is again skating with the team in preparation of his return. He is 30,000 votes behind Gonchar.

Even Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, currently on IR, has closed within 155,000 votes of Montreal's Carey Price, the positional leader."

Why the NHL would choose to spotlight the fact that injured players are gaining in votes is incredibly confusing.

The fact that the league seems to be promoting the selection of injured players as a good thing undermines the entire game.

Again, through its own blog, the NHL is showing the world that its voting procedure is ridiculous and that, due to the policy that fans can vote as often as they want through electronic means, the best players in the league will not be in the starting line-up.

The NHL All-Star Game should be boycotted.