There have been recent allegations that the NHL has stuffed it's own ballot box to ensure that Rory Fitzpatrick wasn't voted onto the All Star Game's starting lineup. It's a long story, really, and either you are interested and you know it already or you aren't interested and you don't. In my opinion the ballot stuffing angle is beside the point. Sure some of Rory's fans must have used bots to boost his ballot numbers, but I'm not so naive as to think that fans of Lidstrom and Neidermayer, the two defensemen who ultimately beat out Rory, or even Sakic (what's up with him making the starting line, he hasn't been one of the top 3 forwards for years). So if the NHL did think that they were correcting a systemic injustice by jacking the votes they were probably mistaken. It was just a matter of Rory getting enough support to attract more and better bots than the others.
More to the point, though, the NHL missed out on a glorious marketing opportunity. From the beginning they were spinning the Vote for Rory campaign as an oddity. Gretz said it made the league look like a joke, and Don Cherry (Why doesn't anyone call him Grapes anymore?) said he thought that the campaign for Rory was having fun at his expense -- laughing at him rather than with him. I think that this impression is partly the fault of the league.
I think that the campaign could have been spun as an homage to the grinders and journeymen who will never go to the all star game based on their statistics, but who are essential to the league and to even the most successful teams. In 2004, I was hoping that my Sens would pick up Chris Simon at the trade deadline to add some physicality and passion to an already skilled team. Instead they got Peter Bondra (if I recall correctly) and tanked out in the early rounds of the playoffs. Calgary picked up Simon and made it to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals.
Simon and others will never be in an All Star Game, but I almost voted for Rory because I think that it is classy to have that sort of player represented rather than just the puck-hogs. This sort of happened in 1993 when the league still felt obliged to send one or two players from every team to the All Star Game. The Sens were setting a new standard of dreadful in their first year in the league and there wasn't much to choose from. So they appointed Brad Marsh (originally of London, ON) to represent Ottawa at the game. He was a classy and respected veteran defenseman who managed to score only 23 goals in over 1,000 NHL games and was probably one of the worst skaters ever to play in the NHL. Granted he stuck around for over 1,000 games so he must have been doing something right, he just wasn't the sort of player that put up a lot of numbers and he didn't look too stylish doing it.
Ottawa fans loved him in the same way that the Buffalo fan who started the Vote for Rory campaign loves Rory Fitzpatrick -- not for his grace, skill or pinache, but because he worked hard and was humble without apologizing for his success. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
The only goal that Brad Marsh scored in the 1992-93 season was during the All Star Game. 'Nuff said.
Cheers
PS I could only find one image of Brad Marsh in a Sens sweater, but it was too small. Oh yeah, and the league sent Sens goalie Peter Sidorkiewicz to the 1993 All Star Game as well. He really wasn't that good, but he was the best player on the team.
