"AllStar" Weekend

"AllStar" Weekend is upon us again. For the players not selected for this weekends festivities in the beautiful city of Montreal, it's a nice break for them to go home, visit family and partake in other fun activities such as fishing.

Thank you Yahoo, that really affects my Fantasy Hockey team.

For those who have been lucky enough to be voted in for the starting lineup (every single player on the Montreal Canadiens) or who were chosen as reserves, they get to spend a weekend of fun including a Skills competition and something which may or may not be called hockey game.

Let's take a look at who was voted in.
For the East: Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Alexei Kovalev, Andrei Markov, Mike Komisarek and Carey Price.
For the West: Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Ryan Getzlaf, Brian Campbell, Scott Niedermayer and Jean-Sebastien Giguere.

Who might be missing from here if it was to be an actual Allstar game. How about league leader in goals at the time of voting and for most of the year, Jeff Carter or perhaps the leader now, Alex Ovechkin. And how about league leader in points among defensemen, Dan Boyle or the leader in goals among defensemen, Shea Weber. Still not done, how about the league leaders in wins, Miikka Kiprusoff and Evgeni Nabakov or the goalie with the best save percentage in the league, Tim Thomas. Clearly the fans don't agree with this. They just want to see their favourite players there whether they deserve to be there or not. I will give credit to Crosby, Malkin, Markov and Getzlaf for racking up enough points so far to actually be considered Allstars.

I'm not going to say don't let the fans vote because that would be wrong, it allows the NHL to get fans more involved in the Allstar weekend which is the whole idea behind it, is it not? But I do have a problem with allowing fans to vote as many times as they want. Make it so fans can vote once per day and then there won't be these pissing contests between cities *cough* Montreal and Pittsburgh *cough*.

Just a few notes about this pissing contest that went on, Sergei Gonchar, who has not played a game this season, and Ryan Whitney, who just recently started his season, almost beat out Markov and Komisarek for starting spots. And Marc-Andre Fleury was close to being the starting goalie even though he was injured during the time of voting. It wasn't just in Pittsburgh and Montreal, Chicago and Vancouver got in on it as well, Kane, Toews and Campbell were miles ahead in voting and Roberto Luongo almost made starting goaltender for the West team. Does this seem right to you? I think not.

Even if the NHL fixes the fan voting problem, they still have a long way to go to have a legitimate Allstar game. One quick way is to do away with this "atleast one player from every team must be at the Allstar game." Welcome Dustin Brown and your 33 points in 46 games to quite possibly your one and only "Allstar" game. And Mike Modano and Keith Tkachuk were once great players, just not Allstar caliber anymore. I would just like to note that while Tomas Kaberle is probably only there because he is the best player on a bad team, he like Rick Nash belong at the Allstar game.

My only other problem with the "Allstar game is the way the game is actually played, but it is played like almost all other Allstar games, no one wants to get hurt (like the recently traded John Tavares, although he didn't miss too many games) so the game is not played to the highest level it could be by all these "Allstar" players.

Whatever your views on the NHL "Allstar" game are, I hope you enjoy watching the festivites this weekend including the always interesting (even though it was only started last year) Breakaway Challenge (if Ovechkin can do what he did last year and actually make contact with the puck, I give him the automatic win).