NHL.com: Has it's link up to vote for the NHL All-Star game and I thought I would share who I voted for and talk about how strange the voting process is.
The good news is you can vote for any player without doing a write in.
The bad news is the primary list of players had some of the strangest choices, many who had poor seasons. Why they simply could not have listed every player at the top when they have that option anyway at the bottom to me makes no sense.
I voted based on the top part of the list and did not see you could write in any twelve players you wanted until after I was done.
You have players like Bryan McCabe on the primary defenders list, players like Scott Gomez and his thirteen goals last year on the list. I don't know if it's based on last year or this year because many players were not very good either year on their primary list.
You have to select twelve player to vote for, three forwards, two defenders, one goaltender. Six from each conference and if you are a Buffalo Sabres fan who wants to vote the entire team in and have that kind of free time, you can spam the vote.
Yes, this goes for those Rory Fitzpatrick fans out there too.
I voted not knowing you could write in any twelve players at the bottom. Given the poor choice of primary players there was no set logic in my voting and some Islander bias here and I did look at last season a lot.
1-Jason Blake based on his forty goals last season with the Islanders, without his production the Islanders do not make the playoffs.
2-Bill Guerin because he had thirty six goals last year on two teams and even though he is not scoring often is the leader of a winning team many felt would be in last at this point.
3-Sidney Crosby because of his age and production and Pittsburgh's record last year.
4-Ryan Whitney of Pittsburgh because he deserved it far more for his club's success than McCabe, Chara or Kaberle who's teams were terrible on defense last year.
5-Dan Boyle because of the outstanding year he had with Tampa Bay and because of how he did well on a club geared toward offense.
6-Rick DiPietro because he had a 9.19 save percentage on a team that gave up more shots per game than any other NHL team a year ago. Without him last year this team is in the NHL lottery. This team was also minus ninety in pp to penalty disparity and still finished ten games over five hundred. He was a dominating shootout goaltender for the most part. And does not have the trap other teams play with protecting him.
After I voted I discovered you could include anyone I would have pulled Dan Boyle and put in Brendan Witt, he was fantastic last season, has been again this year and deserved to be in.
Western Conference:
I do not watch the West like I used to and voted more on reputation in some cases and in others on individual results based on last season.
1-Joe Thornton
2-Pavel Datsyuk
3-Ryan Getzlaf-Best of an outstanding young group last year.
4-Nicklas Lidstrom
5-Dion Phaneuf-Would have been Pronger if playing.
6-Mikka Kiprusoff-Team did not trap like Luongo's Canucks.
Thoughts? Your choices?