This weekend the city of Columbus, Ohio will host the 2015
NHL All Star Game. The event spans three days starting with the NHL All Star
Fantasy Draft on Friday January 23rd at 8pm ET. The draft has
captains Jonathan Toews and Nick Foligno picking from the group of players that
have been selected for the ASG. Toews is
joined by assistants Ryan Getzlaf and Rick Nash, while Foligno is joined by
Patrick Kane and Drew Doughty. This is a fun event for the players and fans
alike, where the main objective for the remaining 36 players is not to be
selected last as Phil Kessel was a couple years back, which he has not been
able to shake to this day.
This year’s event also features 6 rookies (Johnny Gaudreau,
Aaron Ekblad, Jiri Sekac, Mike Hoffman, Jonathan Drouin, and Filip Forsberg), who
will only compete in the Skills competition on Saturday. Another interesting
component this year is there will be fan voting via Twitter for the Breakaway
Challenge.
The player selection process can be controversial to say the
least and this year is no exception. The first six players selected are voted
by the fans. Five of these players are from the Chicago Blackhawks (Jonathan
Toews, Patrick Kane, Corey Crawford, Duncan Keith, and Brent Seabrook). Each of
these players received between 1-1.2M votes, meaning Chicago fans went online
and voted. The player with the highest number of votes (1.5M) is Sabres’ center
Zemgus Girgensons, from Lativia. Zemgus is a popular player, but he his 120th
in league scoring, so he made the team pretty much because Latvian and Buffalo
fans went online and placed their votes.
After the fan vote, the league then selects 36 players and
if we take into account that they chose 3 players from the Blue Jackets to represent
the host city, it meant they had to pick 33 players from 27 different teams. After
that there’s the obvious duo of forwards who are in the top 11 in NHL: Malkin /
Crosby (neither of them will take part in the game because of injuries but both
were originally selected), Voracek / Giroux and Johnson / Stamkos. Finally
there’s the Nashville duo Rinne/Weber who both dominate at their respective
position and finally Vladimir Tarasenko (9th in scoring) and Kevin
Shattenkirk (2nd among defensemen in scoring). Once you put all that
together, the only other two players who came from the same team are Anze
Kopitar and Drew Doughty from the Los Angeles Kings. Could either of those have
been replaced by Nicklas Backstrom (10th in scoring), Henrik Zetterberg
(14th), Erik Karlsson or P.K. Subban? Probably, but you could argue
for or against anyone of those guys.
This leads to the next questions: is it really pertinent to
have one player from every team and is the fan voting really necessary? If the
purpose is to showcase talent, the best players should be there no matter what
team they play for. If the purpose is to get the highest audience, I think
there’d be much better ratings if Backstrom, Zetterberg, Subban and
Datsyuk had been there instead of names like Justin Faulk, Erik Johnson, Patrik
Elias and Zemgus Girgensons. The other option would be to take out
fan voting which would have allowed the league to remove a few Chicago Blackhawks
players from the roster and add a second player, from other teams, who may be
more deserving. You thought the league would have done this back in 2007 after
Rory Fitzpatrick was 24,000 votes shy of being voted into the game. I know it’s
a way to give fans a say but the voting system just doesn't work. It’s time
to move on and try to give a better show to those who just want to watch the game
and don’t take the time to vote hundreds of times for their favourite team’s
players.
The all-star games in pretty much every major sport are
becoming less and less popular except the NHL. The MLB’s attempt to make the
game matter hasn't done anything for TV ratings and the NFL’s attempt to move the
game or add a fantasy draft hasn't worked either. I don’t think a major change
is needed, the all-star game is meant to see the best players showcase their
talent so I think the only tweaking that needs to be done is to make sure the
best players are there.
Labels: Claude Martin