Sunday, April 17, 2011

Hockey Night in Canada's 3-Star Goof-ups

I don't understand how the folks at Hockey Night in Canada pick the 3 Stars of the Game.

After Game 1 of the Canucks-Blackhawks series, in which Vancouver shut out the Hawks 2-0, they named the 3 Stars as:

  1. Roberto Luongo
  2. Jannik Hansen
  3. .....Patrick Sharp?!?!
Luongo posted a shutout and Hansen scored a beautiful breakaway goal, so there's no problems there. But what's with Patrick Sharp? Is this the same Patrick Sharp who plays for the team that failed to score a goal in the game? Is this the same Patrick Sharp who was on the ice for both goals for Vancouver? 

If your team gets shut-out, you'd think that would make a fairly strong case for your team not to get any mention in the 3 stars. Even if a player on the losing team played well (which Patrick Sharp clearly did not), it doesn't mean he was one of the stars of the game. In this case, if anyone on Chicago merited the 3rd star, it would almost have to be Corey Crawford, who didn't allow a goal in the final 50 minutes of the game and gave his team a chance to win. Why is CBC honoring a forward from the losing team who was ineffective offensively and no better defensively? 

Then, after tonight's Game 3, a 3-2 win for the Canucks, there were again some goofy selections: 
  1. Roberto Luongo
  2. Ryan Kesler
  3. Patrick Kane
OK, now this is weird. Luongo is once again a solid pick for Number 1. But there were 4 players who had multi-point nights, and Kesler and Kane were not among them. Daniel Sedin and Christian Ehrhoff both scored once and added an assist for Vancouver, while Henrik Sedin assisted on 2 of the goals. For Chicago, Jonathan Toews set up both Chicago goals and was easily the Hawks' best player. 

On the other hand, Ryan Kesler, despite having a game-leading 6 shots, had no points. He did play some significant penalty-killing minutes and block numerous shots, but he also screen Luongo on the first goal. In the end, he was good, but not really a star

And come on, Patrick Kane? Once again, he was held to one lone assist, was a -1, and was frustrated all night long by Luongo and the defense for Vancouver. Again, not star material. 

Interestingly, once the 3-Stars picks for this game had made it to the HNIC website they had been changed to:
  1. Henrik Sedin
  2. Jonathan Toews
  3. Daniel Sedin
At least who ever writes the game summaries for cbc.ca knows a "star" when he sees one...

1 comments:

Michael Nawrot said...

Media voting on this sort of thing is kind of a sham.

http://www.mc79hockey.com/?p=3629

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