…at least, he would be if the NHL hadn’t “lost” votes for him.

The Vote For Rory campaign was started to choose a player to start in the 2007 NHL All-Star Game who wouldn’t normally be there. A player who isn’t flashy and doesn’t score goals, but is hard-working and gritty and represents the average NHL player. Rory Fitzpatrick, a defenceman for the Vancouver Canucks, was picked to be the representative. By writing in his name in the All-Star ballot, the public could vote for him and show their appreciation of the under-appreciated players.

And by all accounts the campaign was a success. After the first release of voting numbers, Rory was leading all Western Conference defencemen. After the second release he slipped to second (behind Scott Hannan), but after the third he took the lead again. Update: I got this wrong. Rory was actually somewhere around 12th after the first release, then up to fifth or sixth for two releases, then up to second on the fourth release. End Update After the fourth fifth release he had slipped to third, and he maintained this position when the final starting lineups were announced. Rory the All-Star was not to be.

But hold on a second. The NHL released voting numbers during the voting. Let’s take a look at those numbers.

First set, the votes reported by position. Since you have to vote for three forwards, two defence, and one goaltender, it would stand to reason that there would be twice the votes for defenders than for goaltenders, and the number of votes for defenders would be two-thirds that for forwards. Let’s take a look at those numbers:

    	ECF 	     ECD	ECG	WCF           WCD	WCG
30-Nov	1,578,291  1,017,087   508,553  1,525,618  1,048,400  508,549
6-Dec	2,880,247  1,880,803   963,948  2,785,232  1,928,387  884,857
13-Dec	4,189,654  2,769,013  1,412,477	4,136,875  2,821,758  1,399,882
20-Dec	5,199,591  3,468,025  1,757,524	5,179,649  3,522,706  1,744,655
26-Dec	6,178,433  4,125,273  1,981,631	6,158,014  4,076,743  2,076,061
2-Jan	6,815,588  4,537,022  2,304,041	6,762,566  4,483,754  2,281,060

Notes:
First two weeks of WCG only included 8.  The remainder included a 9th goalie.
26-Dec results for ECG didn't include write-in Huet's totals.
WCD always showed 13 players for each week.

The columns stand for, going left to right, Eastern Conference Forwards, Defence, Goaltender, Western Conference Forwards, Defence, Goaltender. Let’s look at the ratio between forwards and defence (you’d expect this to be roughly 1.5):

          ECF/ECD   WCF/WCD
30-Nov    1.55178   1.45519
6-Dec     1.53139   1.44433
13-Dec    1.51305   1.46606
20-Dec    1.49929   1.47036
26-Dec    1.49770   1.51052
2-Jan     1.50222   1.50824

And the ratio between defence and goaltenders (you’d expect this to be roughly 2):

          ECD/ECG   WCD/WCG
30-Nov    1.99996   2.06155
6-Dec     1.95115   2.17932
13-Dec    1.96040   2.01571
20-Dec    1.97324   2.01914
26-Dec    2.08176   1.96369
2-Jan     1.96916   1.96564

And for completeness, the ratio between forwards and goaltenders (which you would expect to be roughly 3):

          ECF/ECG   WCF/WCG
30-Nov    3.10349   2.99994
6-Dec     2.98797   3.14766
13-Dec    2.96618   2.95516
20-Dec    2.95878   2.96887
26-Dec    3.11785   2.96620
2-Jan     2.95810   2.96466

The numbers for the western conference show something odd happening for the defencemen’s vote total releases on December 26 and January 2. They also show something odd happening for the Western Conference on December 6, but given the uncertainty in goaltender numbers for the first two releases (only 8 were reported for the first two releases, and 9 for the rest), we’ll focus on the last four voting count releases.

In the voting period between December 20 and 26 there was either a large increase in the number of votes reported for Western Conference forwards, or a large decrease in the number of votes reported for Western Conference defencemen. Correspondingly, there was either a large increase in the number of votes reported for Western Conference goaltenders or a large decrease in the number of votes reported for Western Conference defencemen. Given that the ratio of forwards to goaltenders doesn’t appreciably change in this timespan, that would mean that either the relative numbers of votes reported for both the forwards and goaltenders increased while the defencemen stayed the same, or the relative numbers of votes reported for defencemen decreased while forwards and goaltenders stayed the same.

Perhaps the most telling statistic is this, the number of votes gained for each position from one reporting period to the next. You’d expect these to be roughly the same, as fans voted for both conferences at the same time. Looking at each conference’s defencemen:

	    ECD        WCD
30-Nov
6-Dec	  863,716    879,987  (+/-  16,271 - 0.9% margin)
13-Dec	  888,210    893,371  (+/-   5,161 - 0.2% margin)
20-Dec	  699,012    700,948  (+/-   1,936 - 0.1% margin)
26-Dec	  657,248    554,037  (+/- 103,221 - 8.5% margin)
2-Jan	  411,749    407,011  (+/-   4,738 - 0.6% margin)

So somehow between December 20 and 26 over 100,000 votes weren’t reported.

Let’s look at the votes gained between each reporting period for the top Western Conference defencemen (all others received less than 5% of the vote):

Votes Rec'd:		6-Dec	13-Dec	20-Dec	26-Dec  2-Jan
Scott	Niedermayer	96,135	60,371	57,474	92,878	51,277
Nicklas	Lidstrom	102,584	53,664	56,327	94,981	50,724
Rory	Fitzpatrick	113,509	124,229	159,784	58,010	63,335
Chris	Pronger  	85,187	63,156	58,413	48,401	44,630
Dion	Phaneuf	        98,401	65,737	42,894	41,495	36,097
Scott	Hannan  	73,890	168,105	56,748	24,009	20,587

Rory Fitzpatrick’s votes dropped from 159,784 to 58,010 between December 20 and 26, a loss of over 100,000, and at a time when media coverage of the Vote For Rory campaign was at its highest. And strangely enough, over 100,000 votes for Western Conference defencemen weren’t reported for the December 26 release. Rory ended up 23,000 votes behind second place vote-getter Nicklas Lidstrom.

A strange coincidence.

All data courtesy Rusty Krustyman.

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