About Sticks, I might as well start in on the new NHL All Star Format:
The new format is to be a lot like a pickup game where we vote in the players and two captains are "selected" and they choose teams from the list of eligible players voted in... at least that's how I understand it.
Why is this a good thing? It's not... unless you are a fan of Alexander Ovechkin and/or Sidney Crosby. Why? Comon people, do you HONESTLY think that they AREN'T going to be Captains? It's nothing more than a brilliant marketing ploy for the NHL to further um...fellate... Sidney Crosby and Ovechkin, or as I like to say it: Jesus Crosby and Alexander Ovech-Christ. The brilliant part of it is that the NHL can fully claim to NOT have selected the Captains at all! They can "Say" that "we" did it ourselves!
I guess things were like that in the NBA when Jordan was around, and we all know that Bettman is praying for Crosby's fandom to be as epic as Jordan's, but meh.
I think the system is dumb. How it should work is, instead of captains, the COACHES of both teams get a list of the players voted in and they have a draft to select the teams. From there, the 3 forwards, 2 D, and 1 goaltender on each team that garnered the most votes from the fans will be the starting lineup. True, in a traditional hockey sense, this leaves the possibility that there won't be a Center on the ice for the faceoff and any permutation of handed-ness mistakes as well, but that's the breaks. The coach can leave them on for a shift and then mix and match the line makeups to make it work. It's not like this game counts for much anyways. Oh, and who are the coaches? I like MLB's system: The Head Coach of each of the teams that went to the Stanley Cup Finals the season before are the Head Coaches at the All Star Game. OR.... Have the Stanley Cup winning Head Coach vs. the Coach of the Year from last year (if they are different people). The Assistant coaches can be selected however the league sees fit.
Hmmm, I wonder if Crosby and Ovechkin will drop the gloves over who gets to draft Stamkos or Thomas?
In any case, this is just another one of Bettman's inane moves to further try to bring Crosby and Ovechkin fans more time hyperventilating over their dream players. And yeah, it's not fair to either of them.
For the record, I think Crosby and Ovechkin are great players, but their hype is so far beyond what is realistic it's very hard to take for say... 30 seconds or longer at one sitting. Try John Madden talking about Brett Favre annoying.
HERE is a great comparison done by Down Goes Brown blog. It's an awesome blog that follows (for the most part) the Toronto Maple Leafs, but it is downright hilarious and I'll continue to plug it as much as I can.
Showing posts with label NHL All Star Game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NHL All Star Game. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Pens And Habs Fans Wage A Cyberspace Battle
Due to an NHL website security meltdown, the league is at the centre of a cyberspace battle that rages between fans of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Montreal Canadiens.
The league’s All Star voting process has been tainted by fans and blog sites alike, to stuff the ballot box by any means necessary.
In a Nov. 11 home game against the Ottawa Senators, it was reported that the Canadiens heavily promoted all star voting during the game. One day ahead of the official start of voting.
When early results were tabulated, it was unusual to see all six Eastern Conference starters from the Canadiens
After these results, rumours surfaced that there was ballet box stuffing going on in Montreal.
Various news agencies investigated why the totals were so disparagingly high for Canadiens’ players while other notable stars such as Sidney Crosby, Evgeny Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin were far off in the distance.
So, why were the votes so highly in favour of Les Glorieux?
Along with legitimate votes, a user on a Canadiens fans site urged people to vote using an automated program called Greasemonkey (a Firefox extension that allows the user to take control of a specific website browser). The program allows users to vote over and over again and this would explain why all six starters, at one point, were all Habs.
According to NHL voting rules, fans are allowed to vote, via internet and text messaging, as many times as they like but are prohibited from using automated voting machines.
“Use of automatic voting methods is prohibited,” says the NHL website. “The NHL will have in place monitoring procedures designed to prevent individuals from unfairly influencing the outcome of the voting by generating significant blocks of votes using technical enhancements.”
The NHL moved quickly on this and eliminated thousands of votes from Canadiens’ players, including 20,000 from Alexei Kovalev alone. The NHL took preventative measures and now the league claims that every real time vote you see has been cast by a real person.
Against the overwhelming number of votes, illegal or otherwise, going Montreal’s way, a popular Penguins blog site decided to do something about it.
On Dec. 10 fans were encouraged to vote and get Crosby and Malkin ahead of Kovalev and Canadiens captain Saku Koivu.
Whether this message had any effect on the vote standings is impossible to say but as of Dec. 25, Crosby and Malkin lead the Eastern Conference in voting, ahead of Kovalev and Koivu.
So far no rumuors of automated programs have surfaced from Pittsburgh.
Currently, Kovalev is third in voting; approximately 480,000 votes ahead of sixth-place Ovechkin, which brings another interesting facet to this debate.
The Penguins have entered into a relationship with the Washington Capitals to further drive this voting war.
The collective effort is called the “Unholy Alliance” and they have made it clear what their intentions are.
“This one time only would bring Pens/Caps fans together to try and stun the world and get A.O. (Alexander Ovechkin) into the top three of the All Star voting,” said the Pens blog site.
“Yes, A.O. is a jackoff, but a Sid-Malkin-A.O. line in the All Star game would be a lot of fun on almost every level. Not to mention it would completely humiliate Habs fans.”
This isn’t the first time that ballot stuffing and agenda driven results have been effective.
Two years ago, 22-year-old Steve Schmid thought it would be a great idea to vote a hard-working, journeyman into the all star game. He chose Vancouver Canucks’ defenceman Rory Fitzpatrick. The “Vote for Rory” phenomenon was born.
Media outlets picked up on this and a few weeks later Canucks’ players were wearing “Vote for Rory” T-shirts. Rory’s supporters started promoting him with video montages on You Tube and soon after he was written about in publications like Sports Illustrated and the New York Times.
At that time, Fitzpatrick had nine NHL goals in his career. He had spent a month on the sidelines with a broken ankle and his name was nowhere to be found on any official NHL ballots.
On the strength of Schmid’s campaign, Fitzpatrick rose through the ranks to third in the Western Conference. He finished behind Nicklas Lidstrom and Scott Neidermayer.
To his credit Fitzpatrick backed out and never played in the 2007 All Star game in Dallas, Texas.
Any way you look at it the NHL has created a fair amount of publicity for itself. Although it’s hard to say if they wanted it through illegal voting. Judging by the desperate straits the league is in, they may take publicity any way they can get it.
The league’s All Star voting process has been tainted by fans and blog sites alike, to stuff the ballot box by any means necessary.
In a Nov. 11 home game against the Ottawa Senators, it was reported that the Canadiens heavily promoted all star voting during the game. One day ahead of the official start of voting.
When early results were tabulated, it was unusual to see all six Eastern Conference starters from the Canadiens
After these results, rumours surfaced that there was ballet box stuffing going on in Montreal.
Various news agencies investigated why the totals were so disparagingly high for Canadiens’ players while other notable stars such as Sidney Crosby, Evgeny Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin were far off in the distance.
So, why were the votes so highly in favour of Les Glorieux?
Along with legitimate votes, a user on a Canadiens fans site urged people to vote using an automated program called Greasemonkey (a Firefox extension that allows the user to take control of a specific website browser). The program allows users to vote over and over again and this would explain why all six starters, at one point, were all Habs.
According to NHL voting rules, fans are allowed to vote, via internet and text messaging, as many times as they like but are prohibited from using automated voting machines.
“Use of automatic voting methods is prohibited,” says the NHL website. “The NHL will have in place monitoring procedures designed to prevent individuals from unfairly influencing the outcome of the voting by generating significant blocks of votes using technical enhancements.”
The NHL moved quickly on this and eliminated thousands of votes from Canadiens’ players, including 20,000 from Alexei Kovalev alone. The NHL took preventative measures and now the league claims that every real time vote you see has been cast by a real person.
Against the overwhelming number of votes, illegal or otherwise, going Montreal’s way, a popular Penguins blog site decided to do something about it.
On Dec. 10 fans were encouraged to vote and get Crosby and Malkin ahead of Kovalev and Canadiens captain Saku Koivu.
Whether this message had any effect on the vote standings is impossible to say but as of Dec. 25, Crosby and Malkin lead the Eastern Conference in voting, ahead of Kovalev and Koivu.
So far no rumuors of automated programs have surfaced from Pittsburgh.
Currently, Kovalev is third in voting; approximately 480,000 votes ahead of sixth-place Ovechkin, which brings another interesting facet to this debate.
The Penguins have entered into a relationship with the Washington Capitals to further drive this voting war.
The collective effort is called the “Unholy Alliance” and they have made it clear what their intentions are.
“This one time only would bring Pens/Caps fans together to try and stun the world and get A.O. (Alexander Ovechkin) into the top three of the All Star voting,” said the Pens blog site.
“Yes, A.O. is a jackoff, but a Sid-Malkin-A.O. line in the All Star game would be a lot of fun on almost every level. Not to mention it would completely humiliate Habs fans.”
This isn’t the first time that ballot stuffing and agenda driven results have been effective.
Two years ago, 22-year-old Steve Schmid thought it would be a great idea to vote a hard-working, journeyman into the all star game. He chose Vancouver Canucks’ defenceman Rory Fitzpatrick. The “Vote for Rory” phenomenon was born.
Media outlets picked up on this and a few weeks later Canucks’ players were wearing “Vote for Rory” T-shirts. Rory’s supporters started promoting him with video montages on You Tube and soon after he was written about in publications like Sports Illustrated and the New York Times.
At that time, Fitzpatrick had nine NHL goals in his career. He had spent a month on the sidelines with a broken ankle and his name was nowhere to be found on any official NHL ballots.
On the strength of Schmid’s campaign, Fitzpatrick rose through the ranks to third in the Western Conference. He finished behind Nicklas Lidstrom and Scott Neidermayer.
To his credit Fitzpatrick backed out and never played in the 2007 All Star game in Dallas, Texas.
Any way you look at it the NHL has created a fair amount of publicity for itself. Although it’s hard to say if they wanted it through illegal voting. Judging by the desperate straits the league is in, they may take publicity any way they can get it.
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