All Star postmortem

Way back when, I didn't realize there was this game called hockey. WKBD used to show all the red wing games but they for the most part, were meaningless to me. No my game was baseball. Every summer, Dad and I would head down to Detroit to the ol' ball park (aka Tiger Stadium) and watch the Tiggers play a couple times in person. And if those games were before a certain date in the summer, it meant only one thing - all star voting. I'd grab a stack of punch ballots and in between scoring the game (something I still know how to do, thank you very much), I'd plunk for Alan Trammel and Looooooooou Whitaker because, even if they weren't having all star seasons, it was who I wanted to see at the all star game. You'd see people with nails being driven through three inch stacks of ballots.

Then my eyes were opened to hockey and baseball was pretty much replaced as my sporting boyfriend. I'd still plunk for my Red Wings because, again, it's who I wanted to see at the all star game. And I'm a firm believer that if you don't vote, you don't get to bitch about who makes it in. If The Russian Five weren't all stars, well at least I tried.

The ballot nail changed when when fan voting moved to the internet. Ok, things got a wee bit suspect about the players voted in but looking back on it, it was still the beauty of FAN voting. If fans wanted Rory wearing an all star sweater, so be it.

The 2011 NHL all star game took that all away. Sure fans could vote for 6 players (though even that seemed to go for naught because it was meaningless in the big picture). Sure Sidney Crosby got the most votes, but the voting was down significantly. I think it was due, in large part, to fan apathy after Brendan "the NHL savior" Shanahan decided it was time to tweak the format. OOOOH let's have a DRAFT! (and full disclosure, I didn't see any of the draft festivities)

Now by all accounts, the players liked the draft format (except, I'm not above pointing fingers and laughing at Paul Stastny. Sure he's an all star but he's lower than Mr. Irrevelant; at least Mr. Irrevelant got a car out of the deal). Sure they are all all stars so what does it matter when they were picked?

But to me it does matter. All but 6 were not picked by the fans. It's always been a popularity contest, I'm not even going to sit here and say that it was. However, it goes back to a league that has proven more than once that the fans really are not all that vital to the game in any aspect. The fans have lost their voice in something so unimportant as a an all star game - which was the last bastion of fan participation. And I think if you ask a fan of the game, they can point out (with stats to back up their beliefs) that there player left off due to their lack of league popularity. *cough John Liles cough*

Will it be this way next year? Probably considering everyone was talking about how great the format was and how exciting it was (though I gotta think people who sold sweaters had to hate it not having pre-games sales). And I for one am sad about that.