NHL All-Star Rant.

This is ridiculous. The NHL All-Star Game is January 25th in Montreal. The game is usually quite boring, with the highlight for me being the Super Skills competition coming the day before the ASG. Anyway, one of the big draws the past few years is that the NHL permits the fans to vote in the starters. It's a cool idea, but with like most other voting scenarios, it becomes a popularity contest. This year's results showcased this unfortunate truth:

Of the six starters in the East (5 skaters and 1 goalie), 4 of them are from the Montreal Canadiens. This makes sense with the Canadiens celebrating their 100th anniversary and all, but the players they voted in are rather ridiculous. They voted in Mike Komisarek (cough), Alex Kovalev (cough), Andrei Markov, and Carey Price (INJURED). Markov's the only guy who should be playing in this game, and he's STILL only a 5th or 6th defenseman (out of 6) when matched up against other Eastern defensemen.

Then there are my Flyers and their 3 players that got the shaft. Mike Richards, Simon Gagne, and Jeff Carter are all in the top 20 in points in the league. Kimmo Timonen's been a solid defenseman all season long. Carter was the only guy to make it because he's tied for the league-lead in goals. And the most ridiculous part of it is that Flyers center Danny Briere was on the ballot despite having played only 9 games! It's absurd. They need to monitor players by how they're playing and not by their supposedly big name and how many points they put up last year.

Ugh. I just wanna watch the shootout event again.