The very public ballot box stuffing campaigns of the past seemed to be missing in this year’s NHL All-Star fan voting. However, very quietly, the fans of the Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs stuffed the ballot boxes to get their boys into the game as starters. In fact, of the six starters voted in by fans, four are Sens and one is a Make Believe. Eight of the top-nine vote getter played for one of the two Ontario teams.

It has become painfully obvious that the current system of fan voting is broken. Whether the ballot stuffing campaigns are public or not, NHL fans are clearly not using their power to vote in All-Star starters to vote for the best players in the league but as a means to execute some sort of cruel joke on hockey fans everywhere. It’s time that the current system is scrapped in favour of one that mitigates the risk of blatant fan tampering with the All-Star Game.

Let’s start this analysis of the current voting system with an examination of the players actually voted in. It’s very easy just to dismiss players from the Leafs because they’re outside the playoffs and the Sens who have the worst goal differential of playoff teams in the East (and 4th worst in the conference). All stats are after games on January 4th which was the last day for fan voting.

Forwards

1. Daniel Alfredsson (OTT) – 12 G, 16 A, 28 P, -1 – 897,055 votes
2. Jason Spezza (OTT) – 14 G, 26 A, 40 P -3 – 817,483 votes
3. Milan Michalek (OTT) – 19 G, 7 A, 26 P, -6 – 743,977 votes
4. Phil Kessel (TOR) – 22 G, 23 A, 45 P, +3 – 701,833 votes
5. Joffrey Lupul (TOR) – 18 G, 26 A, 44 P, +6 – 520,843 votes
6. Sidney Crosby (PIT) – 2 G, 10 A, 12 P, +7, 1.5 P/G – 504,393 votes
7. Claude Giroux (PHI) – 18 G, 28 A, 46 P, +8 – 385,253 votes
8. Jonathan Toews (CHI) – 22 G, 17 A, 39 P, +14 – 341,419 votes
9. Pavel Datsyuk (DET) – 12 G, 28 A, 40 P, +13 – 313,783 votes
10. Evgeni Malkin (PIT) – 15 G, 28 A, 43 P, +5 – 303,726 votes

The leading vote recipient among forwards is 68th in scoring. The third placed vote getter is 78th in scoring. That should do enough to prove that the undeserving are getting into the All-Star Game. Let’s face it, Alfie was going to make the game as a captain of one of the teams. Spezza is 11th in scoring. He probably would have made the game on merit whether or not this game was in Ottawa.

Kessel and Lupul are 4th and 6th in scoring and you could make a case for either player being the league MVP because they’re far and away carrying the Leafs. Crosby is a great player but playing in only 20% of his team’s games shouldn’t make him eligible for the All-Star Game. The rest deserve to be on the leaderboard. However, Giroux got screwed. He’ll definitely be one of the first five picked for the game if someone doesn’t poach him as an assistant captain.

The omissions from this list are ridiculous, however. Neither of the Sedins made the top ten despite being #1 and #2 in scoring and being two of the best players in the league over the last four seasons. They’re 19th and 21st on the results list. Steve Stamkos is leading the league in goals but you have to go down to 16th on the forwards list to find him. Think ballot box stuffing is a Canadian thing? Jordan Eberle of the Oilers is 8th in scoring but the Canadian fans stuffing the ballot box for Toronto and Ottawa weren’t doing the same for Edmonton.

Defensemen

1. Erik Karlsson (OTT) – 5 G, 32 A, 39 P, +1 – 939,591 votes
2. Dion Phaneuf (TOR) – 6 G, 20 A, 26 P, +/- 0 –  614,933 votes
3. Sergei Gonchar (OTT) – 2 G, 19 A, 21 P, -1 –  603,628 votes
4. Nicklas Lidstrom (DET) – 8 G, 15 A, 23 P, +17 –  476,979 votes
5. Zdeno Chara (BOS) – 7 G, 16 A, 23 P, +22 – 463,650 votes
6. Kris Letang (PIT) – 3 G, 16 A, 19 P, +5, 0.86 P/G – 452,979 votes
7. John-Michael Liles (TOR) – 4 G, 17 A, 21 P, +2 – 401,096 votes
8. Duncan Keith (CHI) – 2 G, 20 A, 22 P, +12 – 295,033 votes
9. Shea Weber (NSH) – 8 G, 21 A, 29 P, +14 – 261,597 votes
10. Brent Seabrook (CHI) – 2 G, 11 A, 13 P, +10 – 230,472 votes

When it comes to the blueliners, you’ll get absolutely no argument from me that Karlsson is one of the best d-men in the game right now. He is top 20 in the league in scoring and is the top scoring defenseman by six points. Phaneuf is good and has earned an All-Star roster spot this season but definitely isn’t starter calibre.

Omissions from the top ten are plentiful. Brian Campbell is coming the closest he ever has to earning that big contract of his and is second in scoring by defensemen. Alex Edler is 4th in scoring but only reached 15th in voting. Dennis Wideman and Keith Yandle were top ten in scoring but didn’t even crack the top 25 in voting. All-Star blueliners Dustin Byfuglien and Ryan Suter only received enough votes for 16th and 29th, respectively. Sure, I wouldn’t vote for Edler myself but I think you can make an argument for him ahead of Phaneuf.

While Phaneuf is having a good season, I think you can easily vote for Lidstrom, Chara, Keith and Webber ahead of Phaneuf based on how they’re playing this season and considering their careers. How Gonchar and Seabrook end up on this list this season is beyond me.

Goalies

1. Tim Thomas (BOS) – 1.90 GAA, 0.940 SV%, 17 W, 4 SO – 626,540 votes
2. James Reimer (TOR) – 3.01 GAA, 0.900 SV%, 7 W, 1 SO – 498,075 votes
3. Marc-Andre Fleury (PIT) – 2.26 GAA, 0.914 SV%, 19 W, 2 SO – 424,619 votes
4. Carey Price (MTL) – 2.49 GAA, 0.912 SV%, 14 W, 2 SO – 251,395 votes
5. Henrik Lundqvist (NYR) – 1.92 GAA, 0.937 SV% 17 W, 3 SO – 209,943 votes

Well, the ballot box stuffers got one right. They tried to get Optimus Reim in but he hasn’t had a very good season, even factoring in the concussion. Ottawa’s Craig Anderson ended up in 15th which shows that even Ottawa fans don’t like him. The only other complaint about this list is that King Henrik should have gotten about 300,000 more votes to push him to second. Apart from those two points, the voters didn’t do a horrible job with the goalies.

Clearly, the ballot box was stuffed. Sure, the campaign wasn’t as bad as “Vote For Rory” in terms of outlandish attempts to get a player into the All-Star Game. Still, the fact that fans are voting for their favourite players instead of the best players defeats the purpose of an All-Star Game. Guys like a Milan Michalek aren’t All-Star calibre let alone All-Star starter calibre. Even the Project Mayhem players (Heatley, Havlat and Hossa… Okay, maybe not Heatley) were better than Michalek.

An Alternative

It’s clear that we, the fans, can’t be trusted with the status quo. The NHL hardly gets coverage on ESPN but stacking the vote so undeserving players make the All-Star Game will get the league coverage on the mothership. It just won’t be positive coverage that ESPN will give the NHL.

That brings me to the long ago mentioned change to All-Star voting that will mitigate the risk of ballot box stuffing by fans trying to get Rory Fitzpatrick or Milan Michalek into the All-Star Game as starters. The fans will only count as 50% of the total vote for All-Star Game starters. The remaining 50% will come from NHL players, coaches and general managers.

The risk is that fans will complain that they are being cut out of the All-Star Game by the league because of a small group of fans who are making dumb choices to screw up the All-Star Game. However, the fans have shown that they can’t be trusted on a couple of occasions. Similarly, the league has shown that they can’t stop the fans from derailing the voting process. Giving the players say in the matter gives the experts some say in who will start in the All-Star Game. Since the players know how good everyone else actually is, they should vote for the most deserving players.

There is one other part of this proposed new All-Star voting process would have. The NHL Hockey Operations department currently get to select the players who make the game that aren’t voted in by the fans. That means that the ever so competent Hockey Ops department picks their 40 favourite players to play the game without having to answer to anyone. I say let Hockey Operations get their 40 players but let the fans get to pick two more players to go to the game. Major League Baseball does the same for its All-Star Game and it’s a popular gimmick. Picking two players to join the All-Star Game in the run up to the draft will keep the fans feeling engaged.

At the end of the day, we knew that a day was coming where the fan vote as we know it was going to have change because of fan campaigns to get specific, and not necessarily the best, players into the game. The NHL has shown a willingness to try new things with the All-Star Game with the introduction of the fantasy draft. Changing fan voting to include the players would be another step in the right direction in changing the All-Star Game.