Henrique and Larsson to Represent Devils At the All-Star Rookie Game

Oh look, more proof the NHL all-star game is a circle jerk for the popular kids.

/yawn

I have to accept the fact that Queen Lundqvist is having one of the best seasons of his career and that the fragile Marian Gaborik is having a career year as well. Fine. That’s okay. Congrats guys, really.

But Dan Girardi? Is there some kind of award for blocking shots that I don’t know about because Volchenkov would be a five-time all-star if there was. I mean, Girardi isn’t even the best defender for the Rags statistically. Michael Del Zotto is ahead of Girardi in the following categories: Goals, Assists, Points, +/- Rating, Shooting Percentage, Power Play TOI/G. The only categories Girardi leads in are ES TOI/G and SH TOI/G.

Does having a cute kid on an HBO special get you into the ASG these days?

Our second-most-hated-rivals have four players representing them, but two of them are in the rookie game. Claude Giroux is probably going to be a candidate for the Hart this season, so that’s an acceptable choice. Kimmo Timmonen has done a good job filling in for the loss of Chris Pronger so I can’t really fault the NHL on that choice either.

But Dan Girardi? Come on guys. There are 50 NHL Defenders with more points than Girardi and that includes Joe Corvo, Alex Pietrangelo, Nick Leddy and Ian White, all of whom are arguably just as important to their team’s success as Girardi is to the Rags. This is the only pick that I strongly disagreed with. I think there’s a huge mis-perception about how good Dan Girardi really is.

This is an embarassment. But what do you expect when the NHL “All-Star Game” has two contradictory goals? (choose players most worthy based on their first half / represent every team) It leads to situations such as Carey Price making the club because Montreal must have a representitive.

(Quick digression — too long for sarcasm font, so I’ll settle for italics.)

Do any Moose advocates want to argue that Hedberg belongs in the All-Star Game because his numbers are right around where Price’s are?

(Back to my rant.)

Major League Baseball has this same ridiculous rule, and it has led to some equally questionable inclusions and exclusions. Major League Baseball also has the same quandry with contradictory goals (include a player from every team / but it matters because of homefield advantage in the World Series!) The NFL has it less wrong — you can argue about their selection process and how catastrophically flawed it is, but there isn’t a rule that every team must be represented even though there are 40-odd roster spots for each Conference and only 16 teams to draw from.

Is this year’s ASG going to be any better / more marketable because you’ve included John Tavares and Carey Price? I think not. Is it fair to Edmonton and Carolina and Columbus that they won’t get to see any of their players in the “real game” because all they got were rookies like us?

Change the stupid (expletive deleted) rule: A representitive is only mandatory for the host city, for the defending Cup champion, and for teams above a certain performance threshhold. Even if you set the bar at the laughably low figure of “NHL .500”, you’ll likely open up a few more slots for deserving players because you won’t have to search for “All Stars” on craptacular clubs. Either that or get rid of the fan vote and create a half-dozen slots that way — if the players in question are worthy, they won’t need the fans to vote them in to begin with.