In most American major leagues, the All-Star game is a long-standing tradition, where the league can showcase the best talent from all of its teams, in the form of a generally meaningless competition. In my favourite league, the NHL, there have been, as of this season, fifty-five All-Star Games, usually pitting players from the NHL’s two conferences against each other. While an enjoyable event, the All-Star Games have been derided as unnecessary, uninteresting (note that little physical play occurs at these friendly matches), and detrimental to the flow of the season. The NHL, wishing to reach out to its fans in order to increase support of the game, changed the way all-stars were to be selected. Fans were invited to fill out a form on the NHL’s website listing who they would like to be in the game’s starting lineups. Most importantly, the system allowed fans to vote as many times as they liked.

Noticing the ease at which one person could pile on votes, a campaign was started by members of popular hockey-related forum HFBoards.com to have Rory Fitzpatrick, an unspectacular defenceman currently playing for the Vancouver Canucks, be named as an All-Star Game starter. Fitzpatrick had not stood out to any appreciable degree, and the nomination was meant more of a joke than anything. However, the idea gained steam, and soon was noticed outside of the forum.

With local, and eventually national, news picking up the story, Fitzpatrick’s vote tally rose very quickly. The campaign gained the attention of prominent hockey personalities, such as Wayne Gretzky and Don Cherry, and most influential voices were quick to weigh in with what they felt. As for Fitzpatrick himself, he was flattered, and shied away from the attention. His teammates, however, humorously decided to join in on the voting.

In the end, he finished in third place, one place shy of a guaranteed starter’s position, and was not invited to the game. However, the campaign had made its mark, receiving the attention of hockey fans and journalists throughout the continent. I feel that this is a prime example of the way network effects can incite the general population to do strange and humorous things that they would have most likely done differently, or not at all, if few others were doing it. While writing in joke names at the ballot box has been going on since the invention of the ballot box, very rarely has it made as pronounced an effect as it did here. And while automated tools for voting very quickly in short time spans, taking advantage of the NHL’s shoddy security, were made available, the number of people required to have Fitzpatrick finish in third was still quite staggering. Had the campaign been confined to the forum, with few people outside receiving any information about it, this whole brouhaha would have never occurred.