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Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews surging in All-Star voting
Forwards among West leaders in All-Star voting

By Chris Kuc | Tribune reporter
December 24, 2008

A late surge in voting by fans has the Blackhawks' Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews among the leaders to start for the Western Conference in the Jan. 25 NHL All-Star Game.

Kane and Toews are currently second and third, respectively, in the voting for the game in Montreal after being in the middle of the pack since the voting began.

While Chicagoans have been doing their part, a push from the Buffalo area has no doubt had an impact.

"I don't know what happened," Kane said. "I told my mom and my sisters and all my buddies back home that if they're voting, stop voting because it's getting a little ridiculous."

Anaheim's Ryan Getzlaf leads with nearly 600,000 votes. Kane, at nearly 570,000, and Toews, with about 475,000, are ahead of stars like San Jose's Joe Thornton, Calgary's Jarome Iginla and Detroit's Pavel Datsyuk and Marian Hossa.

"It's cool to be recognized by the fans," Kane said.

The top three forwards, two defensemen and goaltender voted in will start the game. Coaches select the rest of the team, and Kane is campaigning for linemate Patrick Sharp, who leads the Hawks with 18 goals.

"The guy just seems to go unnoticed, for whatever reason," Kane said. "All the guy does is score goals and help the team win in every way. It's a shame he wasn't even on the ballot."

Hawks coach Joel Quenneville believes Nikolai Khabibulin should be in the Western Conference goalie mix. The veteran, who returned Dec. 12 after missing two-plus weeks due to injury, has a 10-1-4 record, a .922 save percentage and a 2.44 goals-against average.

"He has been outstanding every night," Quenneville said. "He has to be deserving of strong consideration."

Khabibulin said he hasn't really thought about it.

"Right now I'm just happy that we're winning," he said."

Posey H8er wrote:Actually Kane and Toews are leading 1-2 for forwards and Campbell is second for defensemen. A large number of fans were cheating the system so the NHL just simply 'took away votes'. I'm okay with that, more Hawks in Montreal the better.

http://fanballoting.nhl.com/leaders

Magilla_Gorilla wrote:Do you have a link to an article discussing the NHL 'taking away' votes?

And later in the day, the official explanation came from the NHL, that many of the votes that have come in for the Ducks over the last several days were texted via an automated script from one cell phone number and were taken away by the powers that be. Here is the official statement from the league: "While we want all of our fans to vote as often as they wish for their favorite stars, we also want to ensure that the votes are cast in an appropriate and fair manner. Over the course of the last several days there have been a significant number of votes that have been submitted for a number of Anaheim players via an automated script. Those votes have been eliminated as per the stated rules of All-Star fan balloting."