While We're At It, Cancel EVERY All-Star Game!

Ah, the All-Star game. Remember being a kid and being excited that all these awesome players were playing together? Usually a player from your team would be playing there, too! Slam dunk contests, home run derbies, skills competitions... it was worth staying in on a Sunday to watch. Then you grow up and it turned into an excuse for taking a fantastic weekend nap with sports on TV. I'll TiVo Saturday's skills competition because the trick shots will be awesome and Versus might give me another goalie fucking up his hip.
Since the lockout, the NHL hasn't put out a single paper ballot for the All-Star Game and ever since, there's a big stink about people who don't deserve to go to the All-Star Game going. John Grigg is back to explain to us why fans shouldn't vote.

The NHL has reached the tipping point with All-Star Game fan voting. It needs to be scrapped. Now.

This wasn't a problem with the paper ballots because who brought a pen or pencil with them to a hockey game? Well they have the internet on computers now, and you can vote for anybody you want as many times as you want. This year you could also text the name of your team to some SMS short code and it counted as 1 vote for every player from your favorite team. So instead of throttling the input of fan votes down to say, a username/password combo and limiting each of those to a certain number of votes, we should abort the whole thing.

With the league insisting all 30 teams be represented, the game is already watered-down. With only six open spots available on each 21-man roster, allowing fans to determine the starters is akin to letting ice cubes melt in an already weak drink.

Letting fans feel like they have a say in something is SUCH a horrible thing. We shouldn't let fans go to the All-Star game. Instead, they should be forced to watch the game in large common areas with TVs that are tuned to Versus.

A few years back, the NHL got a glimpse of the future when a fan-based Internet campaign almost got journeyman defenseman Rory Fitzpatrick voted in. Conspiracy theorists suggest the NHL manipulated the results to ensure Fitzpatrick didn’t make the grade. The player himself was publicly uncomfortable with the possibility.

What Rory Fitzpatrick said he was uncomfortable with was that he was becoming a sideshow. From the CanWest News Service: ''It could have created more of a stir. I just tried to keep it fun and not stressful. If it got to be a distraction for the team or too much, I might have handled it differently.'' The NHL didn't do anything about the voting system because the Vote For Rory campaign made national sports headlines, and there's no way the league would discourage actions that make ESPN talk about the league.

This season the problem was taken to new heights. Eleven players - all either Canadiens or Penguins, including the yet-to-play-a-game-this-season Sergei Gonchar - surpassed Jaromir Jagr’s 2000 record of 1,020,736 fan votes. And just four teams - Anaheim (three players), Chicago (three), Montreal (four) and Pittsburgh (two) - are represented in the starting lineups for the Jan. 25 event.

My biggest problem this year is that four centers and two right wingers are starting. So left wingers can go fuck themselves. John Grigg cares not about positions, only about team representation.

Crosby led all vote-getters, topping 1.7 million votes. Malkin nearly matched him. The four Habs averaged about 1.4 million votes each. None of the other players with one million-plus votes were named reserves. The Hawks and Ducks starters averaged just 747,000 votes each, but took all the spots in the West.

How dare Montreal fans vote to see their players play in front of them when Montreal hosts the All-Star game this year! It's stupid that there's only four teams represented in the starting lineup. I would imagine that after the first shift, those players will be split up between other lines.

In the old days, chad-punching homers voting with their hearts rather than their heads were the problem. Now the NHL has to fend off computer-hacker homers to ensure roster legitimacy. Luckily, most of the starters are legitimate all-stars, but some are debateable [sic]; some laughable.

And only fans of these four teams were stuffing the ballot box? I'm pretty sure that fans of every team are encouraged by their team to stuff the ballot box. I would even go so far as to say that there are very few people that sat down in front of their computer and thought out the scenario of the All-Star game and only voted for the best players. I don't care who starts, because the actual best players in the league will be named to the team anyways. So I might as well vote for my team's best players.

Jonathan Toews will be good, maybe great. But he’s not yet Henrik Zetterberg, Marian Hossa or Patrick Marleau. Scott Niedermayer is a Hall of Famer, but Duncan Keith and Brian Rafalski are more deserving this year.

Replace an Anaheim player with a Chicago player. That's a smart thing to say when you've completed bitching about how only 4 teams are represented in the starting lineup.

Jean-Sebastien Giguere has a Conn Smythe Trophy and a Stanley Cup on his resume. But he’s had better seasons when he wasn’t named an all-star and is being outperformed by others, especially rookie Steve Mason. Mason, at least, will be in the Young Stars Game, but it would have been fun to see the wunderkind in the skills competition and the big game.

It would have been a lot of fun to watch the kid get lit up by the Eastern Conference's finest.

With that in mind, I offer a solution: Have NHL players, coaches and GMs vote on who should represent the best hockey league in the world at its All-Star Game. Then open the starting-lineup voting to fans a couple of weeks prior to the game.

With that as a solution, what's the point of opening it up to the fans at all? To fix fan voting, limit the number of times they can vote. From what I remember, there was a 25 vote limit per person for the MLB All-Star Game. Make fans vote for every position instead of just voting for forwards. Don't give the fans a consolation prize just because the NHL screwed the system up to begin with.

Make the announcement an in-game event. Make a big deal of it. Keep the starters secret and give them prizes of some kind (Alex Ovechkin. Come on over! You’ve won your very own Segway. Sidney Crosby, you get your own apartment!). Make it fun. With some spontaneity and humor, it could be the NHL’s Golden Globe Awards.

A Segway joke? What is this? Do they even make Segways anymore? Give starters priz - - what the fuck just happened to the article? The All-Star Game is enough of a show as it is. If there's one thing the NHL doesn't need, it's a version of the Golden Globe Awards.

Because, really, who cares who starts the All-Star Game, as long as the best players are there? And since the 30-team rule already makes that difficult, the NHL shouldn’t let electronic ballot-stuffers make it impossible.

That's right, he just spent this whole article complaining about the starters and then at the end, he throws up his hands and says "Oh well!" Then why write this? Why not expand the roster to hold 63 players on each side, and the teams switch every period? The first period is determined by fan vote, the second period is determined by the coaches, players, and GMs. The third period - everybody on the ice at the same time! That'll fix your 30-team rule complaint.

Spell Cranky with Three G's

Homer alert: I was alerted to this blog post by the St. Louis Blues' Forums and it concerns my team. As it has nothing to do with what my team puts on the ice, I feel as though I can approach this unbiased. Which actually means that I'm approaching it with bitterness and hatred. That's what shines through most.

John Grigg is way too pissed off about a marketing gimmick coming right out of St. Louis. But to be fair to him, let's see everything he has to say. Even though he doesn't deserve it.

Yesterday in its daily NHL Today media release, the league giddily announced it had set October attendance records with a per-game average of 17,388 – the first time in history attendance had surpassed 17,000 fans per game during the first month of the season – and a capacity average of 94.1 percent.

And the NHL should giddily announce that people are paying money to watch the sport in this economy. "The Lead" gets more time on the ESPN ticker than hockey does now. The NHL should be very happy.

I’m not going to rail on the league for such pronouncements. Despite the appearance of large sections of empty seats in some arenas, we don’t have any hard evidence to contradict the league’s numbers. In fact, one third-party observer is posting data that supports the NHL’s claim.

Sure, expensive seats may be going unfilled, but those things are sold to companies. And was I ever disappointed with that link joke. Let's start the downward spiral.

But what about the ways teams are trying to put butts in the seats? What are the league’s bottom-dwellers doing to further that cause? Gas and food coupons have appeared in some NHL arenas. And all-you-can-eat sections have popped-up in Atlanta, Boston, Nashville and Phoenix.

For the record, I was in an all-you-can-eat section at a Cardinals game when I was in college and discovered the true use for cargo pants that night. In Nashville - the only all-you-can-eat seats I looked into - it's $55 for an upper bowl seat. That's a little expensive and a little far from the action.

But here’s a new one: The St. Louis Blues – who are seventh in average attendance according to ESPN, but 20th in average capacity and 28th in the standings – will pay your mortgage.

It's because ESPN is using an outdated possible attendance figure to calculate average. Old arena capacity used to be 22,000 and now it's down to 19,150. For some reason, ESPN decided to go with about 21,000 for capacity. And thanks to yesterday's overtime loss, the Blues are now tied for 2nd worst team in the league, and 5 points out of a playoff spot. It's early yet.


Yes that’s right Blues fans, as long as you’re a legal resident of Illinois or Missouri, you can win support payments.

Blackhawks fans are eligible. To break down the offer, one person for every remaining Saturday home game gets mortgage or rent paid for the next four months, up to $1,000. 11 home games left on the Blues schedule means the most the team will have to pay out is $44,000. CNN and TSN have picked up the story, and all five of our news outlets reported it in some fashion. I'm no big city lawyer, but that's $44,000 well spent. But let's see some dope shit all over it.

In what can only be considered a bottom-of-the-barrel ticket-drive scheme, the Blues will draw one ticket during 11 Saturday home games beginning Nov. 29 and pay that person’s mortgage or rent for four months, up to a $4,000 maximum.

Are the Blues really interested in paying up to $4,000 to a person? No. I'm sure they don't care. But why is this a crime against humanity? It's all about ticket sales and the team is all sorts of injured. If this was $4,000 worth of gas, this article would be about fat people in Nashville. They aren't checking to see if they have diabetes, but they're feeding them all they can eat! Put a stop to it!

A novel idea to be sure, but it’s also more than a little insensitive. Whoever decided it would be OK to make light of the dire economic circumstances in the U.S. has some explaining to do to the people really feeling the economic pinch.

You want insensitive? The Blues tried to have an all-you-can-drink section. It lasted all of six hours. Sales of the tickets were started and stopped in the same day. I'm an unemployed blogger with bills to pay, and I think this is a very smart idea. The only person with explaining to do is John Grigg. John, get off your high horse. I'd love to have a job where I can type and get paid. Ideally, I would love to have a job. If somebody is having trouble making ends meet, then odds are they won't come to a hockey game. In fact, they should use that $20 for a ticket and buy groceries with it. Let 11 people get $4,000 and stand off.

It’s not just that the Blues are cashing in on all the ink the sub-prime mortgage crisis has received around the world, they’re doing so shamelessly.

Explain how, exactly. Are they forcefully relocating all Blues fans to Nashville? No, it's a gimmick. It's just like all the Crazy Eddie dressing up like Washington in February to sell used cars.

The promotion itself is called the Fan Bailout Plan – in reference to the controversial $700-billion government economic injection meant to prop up the U.S. economy. And the games are being billed as Fannie & Freddie Mortgage Saturdays – in reference to the U.S. mortgage giants the government took over in September and whose failures are at the heart of the economic crisis.

This is what you've chosen to explain? What the hell? Your readers aren't idiots. They know why the economy is in the shitter. But make every single one of them feel like an elementary school kid by spelling it out. Next week, John Grigg will explain to you why the sky is blue and claim it's insensitive to Red Wings fans.

I, for one, am amazed at the level of insensitivity the Blues are showing. Thousands of American families have lost their homes and the entire world is feeling the effects of the U.S. recession, but the Blues and the NHL seem to think playing off that misery to sell a few extra tickets is a dandy idea.

Also in John Grigg's world, the NHL says yes or no to what a single team decides to do to sell tickets. I still do not see how somebody would look at this and see it as a slap in the face as opposed to a gimmick.

Don’t these guys get it? Don’t they realize such promotions alienate the very people they’re trying to attract. Think about it, if your friend or family member had lost their home, would this promotion make you more or less likely to attend a game? For my part, I’d be more likely to not go to any Blues game with something like this on the go.

Good, then don't come. All you'd do is sit in the stands and bitch the whole time about how people in the upper bowl are segregated from the people in the lower bowl by escalators. If I had a friend lose their place, they would be invited to stay here and then we'd probably go to the game. Maybe they'd win some cash. Probably not. 1/19,150 is pretty bad odds.

When you’re languishing near last overall and not putting enough butts in the seats, maybe any idea seems like a good one.

I think enough butts are in the seats. You said yourself that the Blues are 7th overall in attendance with 18,940. I can look past the fact that ESPN hasn't updated their hockey attendance stats, and that you used that to see they have a poor average. Capacity is 19,150, and diving that by 18,940 is not how you calculate averages. Turn those numbers around, and you'll see the Blues are at 99% capacity. Injuries have hurt the Blues this year a lot and that's why they are where they are in the West.

John Grigg is a copy editor with The Hockey News and a regular contributor to THN.com with his blog and the Top 10.

Hey John, I hope you next mortgage check bounces. And by that, I mean that I hope that you don't have enough money in your bank account so that the transaction doesn't go though, which is what is happening to people everywhere in this country.

On a serious note, I do want to know what everybody else around here thinks about this. Am I just not seeing how this is insensitive?