Rory Fitzpatrick Voting Campaign
The fan voting process had been revised so as to allow fans to vote for their favorite players as many times as they wished. This had created a humorous fan voting campaign around Vancouver Canucks defenceman Rory Fitzpatrick, urging many to vote him into the game as a write-in candidate, designed to show that the revised system would lead to ballot box stuffing, in an effort to get the league to change the system. Despite having no points in 18 games and one point in 22 games, Fitzpatrick had surprisingly accumulated 428,832 votes, good for second-place (and a starting spot) among the defencemen when preliminary results were released. Reaction to the campaign was mixed—supporters of the campaign saw an opportunity to consider sending a hardworking but otherwise unspectacular player onto the all-star teams as recognition for their hard work, while opponents claim that it would take spots on the team away from players who generate interest in the league.
Among notable opponents of the campaign were Phoenix Coyotes head coach Wayne Gretzky as well as Hockey Night in Canada commentator Don Cherry. Ultimately, the campaign was unsuccessful, as Fitzpatrick finished third among Western Conference defencemen and was not named as an all-star reserve. Slate suggested that Fitzpatrick had the requisite number of votes and that the NHL altered the results in reaction to ballot stuffing by an automatic script.
Read more about this topic: 55th National Hockey League All-Star Game
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