Thursday, November 6, 2008

NHL All-Star Ballot Proves Bettman Has No Idea

Any Ranger fan who's seen this year's All Star Ballot had to be scratching their head the same as me.

You look down the list and you see Henrik Lundqvist. Fine, great, in my opinion should be the starter.

Then you see the defensemen. And who is the lone Ranger on the list? Wade Redden. Wade Redden?!?!?!?! The same guy we brought in to help our power play and has exactly one power play point. No Dan Girardi, no Marc Staal and no Paul Mara (who I think, at times, has been our best defenseman).

OK so then you think that must be a mistake or a typo. Let me look at the forwards. And who do you see from the Rangers? Chris Drury (2g, 3a -5), Scott Gomez (3g, 8a, -2) and Markus Naslund (5g, 7a, -1)!!!! Does anybody at the NHL headquarters even watch these games. How is Brandon Dubinsky (4g, 8a, +1) and Nikolai Zherdev (5g, 7a, +10) not on the ballot ahead of the three Rangers mentioned?

I know Gary Bettman wants to have the NHL's bigger names playing in the All-Star game ahead of no name guys having a great start to their season for ratings purposes. But here's a news flash Gary, nobody but hockey fans watch the All Star Game.

And by inserting players that aren't deserving of being on the ballot you are risking turning off the die hard hockey fans as well.

Us hockey fans are smart Bettman. We follow the players and their stats. When you try to fool us by putting Rick DiPietro on the All Star Ballot, whose played less than two games all year, you not only tarnish the game we love you insult the fans who watch it.

1 comment:

King Byrne said...

Good post, I agree with you 100%. I believe the problem is that the NHL is trying to promote the All-Star game too early in the season, and therefore have to go on player's past performances to fill out the ballot. I think the game should be played during the Stanley Cup Final, players selected who are not still playing in the finals should be obligated to play, and those selected that are still playing on one of the two teams still in the finals should be recognized as All Stars but not allowed to play, obviously because their respective team is in the final.

This would solve the problem of putting names on the ballot, because then the league could wait until about game 50 to produce the ballot , but it would also draw more attention to the finals, as the All-Star game would occur on an off day, same with the skills competition. The two weeks that is scheduled for the finals would become a league-wide event.