All Star Voting: Is It Write?
November 28, 2007 by Tyler
Filed under NHL Players
With the advent of fan voting for the NHL All-Star game, we have seen many instances where creative fans have attempted to harness the power of the internet to take advantage of the “write-in” voting option and earn an All-Star nod for a player not nominated.
The most prolific and certainly the most recognized attempt was last season’s Vote For Rory Campaign that led to accusations the league altered the vote count in order to prevent Rory Fitzpatrick from being nominated to the All Star game via write in ballots.
This season we are witnessing a whole new campaign that actually has merit. A website has been developed to try to earn Mike Richards of the Philadelphia Flyers a spot on the Eastern Conference roster for this season’s NHL All-Star Game.
While the Vote For Rory campaign was clearly a farce, the Mike Richards campaign begs a valid question.
Should Mike Richards be in the NHL All Star Game?
Below are the latest voter statistics with the (*) indicating write in votes.
It appears that Mike Richards does have a solid following of fans and that Alexei Kovalev has won at least a few sappy hearts with his talented, yet lazy, play in Montreal this season.
So there you have it, another internet marketing campaign to get a player voted on to the All-Star roster.
Do you think that Mike Richards deserves to be an All-Star?
TonyH on Thu, 29th Nov 2007 10:36 am
Tyler, I was nice to see them add the captcha to the voting. This will stop those macro users from having their bots do the work. I am not sure about how I feel, but it seems that getting the top players into the all star game is just not as important as it used to be. That whole vote for Rory stunt last year really soured the whole game for me.
I would just as soon allow everyone to have just one vote per day and anymore than that all votes for the violators IP would be erased. Thats just my 2 cents on this attempt to alter the goodness of the All Star game with their stupid campaigns… Thanks TonyH
Tyler on Thu, 29th Nov 2007 9:12 pm
Tony,
I agree that fans need to have their say, and the NHL has tried to prevent “gaming” of the process.
I guess it is just a matter of being one step ahead…but there will always be someone out there trying to beat the system.
Mr. POintless comment on Fri, 14th Dec 2007 1:17 pm
Where is marc savard and zdeno chara in all of this
Savard has th most assists in the league and chara is the best defense