All-Star voting a travesty
The Internet is not to be messed with. It’s a lesson sports leagues should probably all have learned by now, but alas, the latest debacle regarding the NHL all-star vote shows these big businesses still have a lot to learn about the behaviour of the little guys on their mobile devices.
The NHL made itself a villain this week when fans voted a largely unknown hockey player named John Scott to join the likes of Alex Ovechkin, Jaromir Jagr and Patrick Kane as one of the 2016 All-Star Game captains. Not liking the result, the NHL reportedly asked the journeyman enforcer to excuse himself, before allegedly forcibly disqualifying him by orchestrating a trade that would artificially land him in a lower league.
Scott, who had decided to make the most of what began as a joke vote, even making Tshirts to celebrate his self-admitted unlikely accomplishment, suddenly wasn’t only presumably off the all- star squad, but out of the NHL. The league denied the trade had anything to do with the all- star vote, but many fans and analysts saw it differently.
“( The) NHL failed Scott,” SB Nation’s Pat Iversen declared on Monday, days after the Arizona Coyotes traded Scott to the Montreal Canadiens, who then sent him down to the American Hockey League. “They took a surprisingly heartwarming moment and story for the sport and obliterated it out of pettiness and pride for a fake hockey game, causing reallife consequences for a lowpaid player and his growing family.” (Scott and his wife are expecting twins.)
The backlash became so pointed that on Tuesday, the NHL declared Scott would remain an all-star captain after all, which will entitle him to the benefits that go with it. This year, the winning team gets to split $1 million in prize money, according to Canada’s Sportsnet, which equals about $91,000 per player.
“John Scott will captain the Pacific Division team at the 2016 Honda NHL All-Star Weekend in Nashville,” the league announced in a statement on Tuesday. The league ignored all allegations that it somehow actively tried to orchestrate a situation in which Scott wouldn’t play and instead said the trade “created a unique circumstance that required review.”
The NHL is reportedly taking steps to avoid this type of situation in the future, according to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. Earlier this month he reported the league is discussing whether to eliminate the write-in vote and provide a multiple choice-style list for online voters to pick from, or limit the amount of weight the fan-vote carries, but leaving final decisions to the league’s discretion.
“I think we’re pretty safe to say we’re not gonna see the same kind of all-out (write-in) voting that we saw this year,” he said.
The NHL isn’t the only league to get burned by the Internet when it comes to open fan votes. Justin Bieber’s online clout tipped the scales in favour of Los Angeles Clippers star Chris Paul this month when the pop star tweeted his vote for his NBA all-star selection. With more than 70,000 retweets, Bieber’s two Twitter votes for Paul suddenly accounted for tens of thousands more.
MLB saw fans heavily influence the roster of last year’s all- star game, as well, when Kansas City Royals supporters voted seven members of the team to the roster.
In other words, it’s not the fans who are the problem; it’s the system.
SAFE TO SAY WE’RE NOT GONNA SEE THE SAME KIND OF ALL-OUT (WRITE-IN) VOTING THAT WE SAW THIS YEAR — ELLIOTTE FRIEDMAN