All Star Or All Smear?

The lineups for this year's NHL All Star game have been announced and, due to a shrewd marketing campaign, both the East and West All Star teams show as little diversity as a David Duke birthday party. 

The East is represented by just two teams—Montreal and Pittsburgh, the West also shows only two teams—Chicago and Anaheim.

There's no taking anything away from any of these players.  You don't get to the All Star game by merely being popular.  Sydney Crosby, Alexi Kovalev, Jonathan Toews and John-Sebastian Giguere are all worthy, all great, and are all future Hall of Famers.  But come on...Cary Price?  The leading vote getter of all time for goaltenders?  He's certainly not even in the same category as Luongo, Fernandez or even Ty Conklin.

It's a good thing the league and master-mind, master-architect, Gary Bettman, have several "discretionary" slots they can use to insure some of the greatest players in the league don't get locked out of All Star weekend, due to the size of their market or the breadth of the marketing push. 

The defending Stanley Cup winning Red Wings, who posted no fewer than six players in the voting, were able to only get close to the lowest voted player in the West.

Sure, I understand that this is supposed to be for the fans to choose their favorite players, but if hockey wants to appeal to a broad audience a few things have to happen:

• The NHL needs to step in where inequities like this All Star debacle occur—There's a whole world outside of LA, Chicago, Montreal and Pittsburgh.
  
• Fans need to respect and appreciate the game—the struggle between teams and opposing players and fans.  No more of the BS that happened on New Year's Day, where Blackhawk fans chanted obscenities directed towards the Red Wings, their fans and the city of Detroit itself.
• Get hockey on mainstream cable TV more often.  Versus doesn't show enough games, NBC only does it to satisfy some nascent desire by some unknown executive there and CBC doesn't broadcast consistently throughout the US.

Let's bring the fans, all the fans, back to hockey by making the All Star game something where everyone has a player to cheer for.