This Seems Familiar

The Vote for Rory campaign was not successful this season.  For those of you out of the loop, VFR was an Internet phenomenon that tried to exploit the poor decisions of the NHL's online voting system for this season's All-Star game by voting in a non-deserving player.  Rory Fitzpatrick is a journeyman grinder that has only one assist this season and 9 total goals over his 10 year career.  Not exactly All-Star quality.

Why such a fuss over an undeserving player?  It has little to do with Rory and a LOT to do with the NHL.com website and it policies.  According to the rules, anyone can vote as much as they want.  A horrible rule that just begs to be exploited in my opinion.  I already hate the idea of fans voting for any All Star game, mainly because fans have their judgment clouded by their home team.  They tend to flood ballot boxes with their home teams' players or only familiar players, not always the best players.  This system turns a vote for best players in the game into a popularity contest.  That being said this years system had another glaring fault:  poor security.  The web site's system to thwart automatic entries was laughable and easily bypassed.  (How do I know?  I have done something like this before, and even played with it this season before I realized that it was not worth the risk.)

If Rory did not make it to the All Star game, why am I writing such a lengthy post?  Shananigans!  That's why!  With the Vote For Rory campaign gaining some serious momentum and threatening to make a mockery of their online voting system, the NHL apparently "misplaced" 100,000 of Rory's votes, pushing him just out of contention for a starting spot on the All Star roster.  While I do not think that Rory deserved to be an All-Star, a poor system was already in place so shouldn't poor results be expected?  Yeah, two wrongs don't make a right, but this seemed fun to me.