Online Voting May Produce Skewed Results? I'm Shocked, Just Shocked!

As everyone's favorite beat writer pointed out yesterday on Capitals Insider, Alex Ovechkin has dropped to third among forwards in the Eastern Conference All-Star voting. (Even more disturbing? Marc-Andre Fleury is the leading vote getter among Eastern Conference goaltenders. When did Penguins fans learn how to use computers?) Obviously, I probably don't need to expend any energy exhorting you to stop wasting time reading this and go vote. I don't know about you, but, living in DC, this is my only chance to vote for something that actually matters.

While I'm on the subject of All-Star voting, what, exactly, does the voting all mean? I'm not entirely clear on the rules here, nor am I clear on how the votes are factored in when deciding who gets to actually play in the All-Star game. Is it just the starters who are decided by the fan vote, a la MLB? Or is it some combination of the fan vote and other factors, a la the NFL? Anyone who can refresh my memory on this one wins a gold star.

Speaking of Stars, Jeff Halpern will be wearing one when he steps on the ice at Verizon Center tomorrow night. I was never as impressed with Halpy as everyone else. I felt that the old 10-11-22 line was more than the sum of its parts and once he was seperated from Dahlen and Konowalchuk he wasn't too much more than an average NHLer who happened to be from the DC-area. Frankly, his departure left the captaincy open for Chris Clark, who has been one of my favorite things about this year's team. So I'm having a hard time getting paricularly worked up about his return one way or the other. Which is probably a good thing, since I'll be missing the game anyway.

Apropos of nothing, I was walking down 7th St tonight and the big screen on the side of the Phone Booth was airing the Flyers-Predators game. Was this game showing on Comcast down here and I didn't know about it? Or was it just on the big screen?