NHL claims all-star votes are valid, explains fraud prevention

NHL claims all-star votes are valid, explains fraud prevention – Puck Daddy… – NHL – Yahoo! Sports:


Last week, a scheme by Montreal Canadiens fans to flood the NHL All-Star Game ballot box with artificial votes was uncovered, in which a computer script inflated vote totals for Alexei Kovalev, Saku Koivu, Alex Tanguay, Andrei Markov, Mike Komisarek and Carey Price.

Over the weekend, and under the radar, the NHL took some action against these robo-votes

Nothing new here.

As I wrote back in 2006 in the Rory Fitzpatrick wars…

Two for Elbowing: Kuklas Korner:


Nope. Every year. just like clockwork. And it doesn’t matter. Not now, now last year, not ten years ago when the NHL started online balloting and the Sharks fans made it their goal to get Andrei Nazarov into the All-Star game (hey, back then, the NHL simply threw the votes out. no idea why they finally decided this year to treat this like a real election and count the fitzpatrick campaign; they have a long track record of ignoring or invalidating stuff they find inconvenient,a nd all of us involved with the “50,000 votes for Nazzy” campaigns (which may actually still be happening, I’ve lots touch) have known since year 1 that the vote was fixed (because none of our votes ever were counted, even when we followed the rules. WE won’t even get into the mid-campaign rule changes the NHL threw in to block us the first few years…..)

My basic philosophy still applies: it’s a FREAKING ALL-STAR game. Let the fans see who they want to play. If that’s Rory Fitzpatrick, fine. If that’s Pavel Bure, also fine.

I think the NHL is taking the right general attitude here, keeping the bots out. About the only change I’d make is to expand the ballot further; since it’s now online and not printed, there’s no real reason not to. And because it’s online, they don’t need to set the ballot until really late in the process, unlike printed ones. Make it, say, all players with either half a point a game or 18 of the first 20 games played for skaters, and 14 of 20 games played for goalies.

And otherwise, all I can say is that people who really get uptight over this stuff, who’s in, who’s out, who’s on the ballot — unless it’s your job with the NHL to create the ballot, you really have more important things you ought to be worrying about. relax. chill. Please.

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