The Fitzpatrick conspiracy

The campaign to put Vancouver Canuck Rory Fitzpatrick into an all star sweater has suddenly hit a little internet turbulence. As the fan favourite who was packing away the votes a week ago, this week finds himself dropping down the list of the most wanted for Dallas.

Now conspiracy buffs will have visions of Gary Bettman and a gaggle of NHL VP’s sitting up late into the night, voting early and voting often, to make sure that the vision of Fitzpatrick donning an all star uni doesn’t come to pass.

This current all star voting process, which uses a process of one fan, many votes, now seems to have about as much reliability as a Florida presidential vote count, and we all remember how well that worked out!

The debate reached the point of nastiness over the weekend as both Don Cherry and Kelly Hrudey; CBC commentators on Hockey Night in Canada called the campaign for Fitzpatrick a bit of a joke.

Now while we can see Hrudey being computer literate enough to probably stay up late to sway some votes, the possibilities of Don Cherry successfully negotiating the keyboard to scupper Fitzpatrick seems remote.

But, over at the NHL offices, well you can sense the panic in the air at the possibility of the under achieving Canuck defenceman edging out a Niklas Lidstrom, Scott Neidermayer or Chirs Pronger.

With the latest results now tabulated, Fitzpatrick has dropped to third place, Scott Niedermayer of the Anaheim Ducks leads the defencemen with 540,380 votes, followed by Nicklas Lidstrom of the Detroit Red Wings at 522,345. Fitzpatrick has earned 486,842 votes.

If this were a game of Clue, the answer very well could be; Gary Bettman, in the office with a keyboard.