Kris Letang, Marc-Andre Fleury? Will the Real NHL All-Star Teams Please Stand Up

January 9th, 2011 by Scott Weldon Leave a reply »
In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, "When will people learn? Democracy doesn't work!" While democracy works better than any other system humans have cobbled together to form governments, it's a miserable way to pick an NHL All-Star team.

The NHL first gave the vote to the fans in 1985 and then after a flurry of ballot stuffing took it away. Fan voting for NHL all-stars soon returned. The inability of that system to even attempt to accurately assess who the best NHL players are for the first half of the season has always been painfully evident.

Thirty teams in the league make it unlikely that most NHL fans have even seen all the players play a complete game. Generally, the NHL ballot is missing some of the best players in the league every year. A created ballot just can't keep up with what's happening in the league in real time nor include all the players who deserve consideration.  

This year, the fans were only required to put together one league-wide first All-Star team. This has the virtue of limiting their input but also seems to attract the stuffers in droves. 

The fans chose three centers, two defenseman and a goa ...

Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
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