Assembling the worst NHL all-star roster ever

The NHL all-star game is this weekend, and the rosters are… well, they’re fine. Maybe a few names that are mild surprises, sure, and there are probably too many Blackhawks, but there always are. Overall, the league did a reasonably good job of filling out the rosters this year.

That hasn’t always been the case.

To be clear, there’s really no such thing as a bad all-star. If you’re on the all-star team, you can’t be all that bad. Even if you really shouldn’t be there, you’re still a halfway-decent hockey player.

So no, the all-stars we’re going to talk about today aren’t bad. Let’s come up with a more polite term for them. They’re, uh, “differently qualified.”

That works. Today, let's go through some of the more questionable picks over the years and see if we can put together a full roster of the oddest all-star picks in NHL history.

To do that, let's figure out how non-all-star-type all-stars end up on the team in the first place. Usually, the picks fall into one of a handful of categories:

• The late replacement: Somebody else was supposed to go, they couldn't make it, and you were available.

• The one-per-team rule: Most years, the NHL insists on having each team represented by at least one player. When a team is really bad, that can lead to some interesting choices.

• The ballot-box stuffing: Somebody gets voted in by an enthusiastic fan base and/or a small Baltic country.

• The weird format: When it's the traditional conference-vs.-conference or the current division-vs.-division format, things tend to go OK. When the NHL tried to more creative, things got weird.

• The Crazy Mike Milbury: We'll get to it.

One important note: For this team, we're not counting commissioner picks. For a few years back in the ’90s, the commissioner could add a player or two to each roster after they were finalized. It was a way to recognize respected veterans whose careers were coming to a close, and it would feel wrong to pick on those guys. So that's why there's no Brad Marsh on our roster.

With that in mind, let's meet our team.

GOALTENDERS

John Garrett, 1983

Qualifications: The popular veteran (and current beloved broadcaster) had enjoyed a long career, first in the WHA and then in the NHL. But he wasn't exactly anyone's idea of an all-star, posting a career GAA north of 4.00, which wasn't great even in the offensive 1980s. When the Canucks acquired him in February, 1983, it was to serve as a backup to starter Richard Brodeur.

Category: The late replacement, with some one-per-team rule mixed in

Brodeur was supposed to be the Canucks' representative. That would have been an iffy pick in its own right, but somebody from Vancouver had to go and Brodeur was having a decent season. But he got hurt a few days before the game, meaning the league needed another Vancouver goalie to take his place. Garrett was the only option, even though he'd been a Canuck for less than a week and had only six wins on the year.

As a side note, Garrett played well in the game. In fact, legend has it that he had been voted MVP midway through the third. But then Wayne Gretzky scored four times, the vote was changed, and Garrett lost out on a free car.

Peter Sidorkiewicz, 1993

Qualifications: After a few years of steady work in Hartford, Sidorkiewicz wound up in Ottawa for the Senators' first season. Playing behind one of the worst teams in NHL history, he got shelled every night. When the all-star break rolled around, he had a record of 4-32-3 and a goals-against average of 4.40.

Category: One-per-team

Hey, somebody from Ottawa had to go. Most expected it be someone like Norm MacIver or Sylvain Turgeon. But instead it was Sidorkiewicz, a surprise pick that left bigger names like Ron Hextall and Tom Barrasso at home. Hey, think of it this way – who better to suit up in a game where nobody plays defence than a goalie for a terrible expansion team?

Craig Billington, 1993

Qualifications: He was midway through the only 20-win season of his career, and Martin Brodeur was still a year away from arriving as a full-time NHLer.

Category: No idea. This is the only pick on our roster where not one of the standard categories seem to apply.

It's fair to say that 1993 was a weird year for goalies, as Billington joins Sidorkiewicz on the Wales squad. Fun fact: A few months later, they'd be traded for each other.

Honourable mentions: Tim Cheveldae (1992), Manny Legace (2008), Rick DiPietro (2008)

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

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A history of ridiculous NHL all-star selections

The NHL All-Star rosters were announced on Saturday, and everyone is mad because that’s the whole point.

Some guys were undeserving, several more were snubbed, and at the end of the day none of it really mattered because All-Star games are kind of pointless when you think about it. But it’s all in good fun, and considering the entire Blackhawks roster had already been voted in, the league did the best it could with the few spots it had to work with.

Besides, if you think some of this year’s choices were odd, none of them come close to matching some of history’s strangest All-Star choices. After all, the league has been doing this for decades. The odds say that every once in a while, things are going to get truly weird.

So today, let’s take a look back at some of the oddest All-Star picks from over the years. Maybe by the end of this post, Justin Faulk won’t seem so bad.

John Garrett and the Case of the Disappearing Car

If John Garrett’s name sounds familiar, it’s probably because he went on to a very successful broadcasting career after his playing days were over. He’s been in that business for more than 25 years, working for properties like Hockey Night in Canada and Sportsnet. He’s a really good TV guy.

What he never was, though, was an especially good NHL goaltender. He spent six years in the league, mostly backing up, while posting a career goals-against well north of 4.00 and never winning more than 16 games in a season. Given all that, it sounds strange to describe Garrett as a former All-Star. But the story of how he got there is even stranger, and there’s a good case to be made that he’s the most unlikely NHL All-Star pick of all time.

Here’s how it happened. In February 1983, Vancouver’s starting goalie was Richard Brodeur, a pretty good player who’d just been chosen as the Canucks’ lone representative at the All-Star Game. The team traded for Garrett on February 4 to add a veteran backup. The next night, Brodeur suffered a serious ear injury that took him out of the lineup just days before the All-Star Game would be held.

That left the league with a problem. Brodeur was the Canucks’ only All-Star selection, and the rules said that each team had to be represented. And since he was a goalie, his replacement would need to be one too. That left Garrett as the only possible choice, even though he’d won only six games all year. At the time, the whole thing was viewed as “kind of a mockery of the sport,” according to, uh, John Garrett himself.

Old-time fans may remember what happened next. Garrett came in midway through the All-Star Game and stood on his head, making several spectacular saves. He played so well that when MVP voting was done during the third period, he was chosen as the winner of the award, and the new car that went with it.

Then Wayne Gretzky scored four goals, all in the third period. There was a hasty revote, Gretzky won, and Garrett presumably had to hitch a ride home. He still earned the win, though.

The Senators Double Down

You might assume that Garrett’s six wins would be an unbreakable record for the fewest by an All-Star goaltender. And if the NHL All-Star Game were really about honoring the best of the best, you’d be right.

But here comes that tricky “at least one player per team” rule again. In a normal year, that can result in some odd picks. But when you enforce that rule during an era of historically awful expansion teams, things can get downright silly.

It’s how we wound up with forgettable early-’90s All-Stars like Bob Kudelski, Brian Bradley, and Kelly Kisio. And it’s how we ended up with the owner of perhaps the worst stat line to ever be honored with a selection: Ottawa Senators goaltender Peter Sidorkiewicz.

Sidorkiewicz was a decent goalie who’d had some success in Hartford before heading to Ottawa in the 1992 expansion draft. That Senators team would turn out to be awful, and poor Sidorkiewicz had to bear the brunt of it. He played 64 games and led the league in losses and goals against.

That didn’t prevent him from being named to the 1993 All-Star team, even though he headed into the game with an almost unthinkable 4-32-3 record. Maybe it was pity. Maybe the Senators just didn’t have anyone else. Either way, Sidorkiewicz got the call.

Ironically, he didn’t end up being the lone Senators pick after all. This was back in the days when the league would honor players with a “commissioner’s selection,” allowing veteran players at the tail end of their career to get into the game. In 1993, one such pick went to Ottawa’s Brad Marsh, the journeyman defensive defenseman who’d plodded his way through a 15-year career with five different teams.

So the Senators actually sent two players to the All-Star Game that year: a goalie with four wins and a veteran with 23 career goals in more than 1,000 games. If there’s ever been a worse All-Star pairing from a single team, I’m glad I wasn’t around to see it.

Needless to say, Marsh scored a goal and Sidorkiewicz earned the win.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Democracy doesn't work: All-star voting through the years

Did we say all-stars? Maybe we
should have said "mostly stars".

This week saw the release of the first batch of results of fan voting for the 2011 all-star game. With this year's game featuring a creative new format that will see players divided up with a schoolyard-style draft, fans are paying close attention to the voting results as they come in.

The numbers so far have certainly given us plenty to talk about. Fans have organized write-in campaigns for players ranging from Paul Bissonnette to Sean Avery to Carey Price. Meanwhile, so-called star players such as Ilya Kovalchuk and Vincent Lecavalier trail far behind.

Debating the all-star votes has become an annual tradition that dates back to the inception of fan-chosen teams in 1986. Here's a look back at some of the more memorable moments in fan voting over the years.

November, 2008 - Montreal Canadien fans launch a ballot-stuffing campaign they discretely refer to as "Operation let's get a mediocre defenceman elected to the all-star team and then see if the Maple Leafs will massively overpay him in free agency".

December, 2006 - The NHL scoffs at accusations that they've tampered with the results of the balloting after announcing that a record 100% of fans have cast their vote for Gregory Campbell.

January, 1987 - Despite your careful efforts to punch the ballot just right and then hand it to the patiently waiting usher, you are devastated to learn that your childhood hero has not been selected for the game. Years later you will pinpoint the experience as the exact moment you learned the lifelong lesson that voting for things that are important to you is a complete waste of time.

February, 2009 - Three weeks after the all-star game is played, mailed-in ballots from Blackhawks general manager Dale Tallon begin arriving at league headquarters.

January, 1997 - Claude Lemieux is flattered to learn that he has been named a starter on the Western Conference team thanks to a write-in campaign organized by Detroit Red Wing fans, although that feeling fades somewhat when he realizes that the same campaign has also elected Eastern Conference starters Rob Ray, Tie Domi, and an angry Doberman.

December, 2008 - Rick DiPietro casts a vote for himself, then spends six months on injured reserve due to the resulting paper cut.

January, 2001 - Defenceman Mark Eaton is the runaway vote leader in fan balloting, causing the league to rethink that season's heavily criticized "Delaware vs. The World" format.

December, 2009 - Attempts by Calgary ownership to encourage fans to flood the league office with write-in votes for Flames players goes awry when the players mistakenly assume the slogan "This Year, Let's All Mail It In!" is the team's new mission statement.

January, 2004 - A concerted write-in campaign by Ottawa Senator fans results in the entire Eastern Conference starting lineup consisting of variations of the phrase "Leafs suck".

January, 1993 - The league's efforts to encourage grade school children to vote backfires when the two starting goaltending spots are won in a landslide by Ron Tugnutt and Daren Puppa.

October, 1998 - The NHL's first attempt at online voting proves unpopular with fans, mainly due to its requirement that fans log in to the web site, click on their favourite player's name, and then mail their computer to the league's head office.

January, 1991 - Chris Nilan is named to the Wales Conference all-star team by head coach Mike Milbury, which would be the funniest joke in this entire piece except that it actually happened.

December, 2008 - Sidney Crosby attempts to cast his vote, but is thwarted in his efforts to punch the ballot after being unable to locate its crotch.

Signs that you too may be getting hockey advice from a deranged homeless person

Hire him. This guy looks legit.

The strangest story of the week came out of Pittsburgh, where we learned the sad tale of a troubled homeless man who had been sending Mario Lemieux tips on how to better run the Penguins.

While this was clearly an extreme case, the fact remains that those in positions of power in the NHL are surrounded on all sides by people offering them advice. And unfortunately, not all of those people are going to be all there.

In an attempt to help out the NHL's power elite, here are a dozen signs that the person giving you hockey advice may in fact be a crazy homeless person.

• His entire offensive gameplan consists of teaching your players how to do the breakaway move from NHL '94.
  
  
• Whenever the team is faced with a difficult financial decision, he suggests calling Sergei Fedorov for advice.
  
  
• He's started a petition to have the Maple Leafs adopt a new uniform that would feature their old vintage style jersey and no pants.
  
  
• He spends eight hours a day hanging out in front of his mail box waiting for a qualifying offer from Dale Tallon.
  
  
• He suggests that the team start new a playoff tradition by encouraging fans to mark key moments of crucial games by throwing an octomom on the ice.
  
  
• He was the one who convinced you to give Chris Pronger a seven year extension.
  
  
• He repeatedly suggests that "Maybe you should run that one by Mr. Wang", but you don't work for the Islanders.
  
  
• The only job he lists on his resume is "Senior public relations consultant to Dany Heatley".
  
  
• For some reason, he's wearing Chris Nilan's bathing suit under his clothes.
  
  
• He keeps going on and on about how the Leafs should sign Chris Durno.
  
  
• His laptop is full of downloads titled "Sideline reporter naked peephole video", but they're all of Pierre McGuire.
  
  
• Every time he has a difficult decision to make, you catch him staring at his "WWJFJD?" bracelet.