Hobey Who?

File this one under a bitter small school in an small conference complaining. There's plenty of us, and I can already see the guys over at Lets Go DU! and Western College Hockey (both whom have kindly linked to us,) saying to themselves: "Goddammit, not this shit again." But, I can't take Vote for Hobey seriously.

What could be a great way to get the fans involved in selecting the winner of the most prestigious award in college hockey is a farce, or at best a way for tech schools to test their web scripting technique. I always wanted to think the best of Vote for Hobey, a real chance for that fan’s voice to be heard; sadly, now it’s just an exercise in trying to beat a system that encourages ballot stuffing and computer jury-rigging. Sure it's just 1 of 59 votes that determines the finalist for the Hobey Baker award, but do you want to tell #11 that a bunch of overzealous fans or dorm room geeks, like us, took away his chance to be finalist?

When Wisconsin and RPI can qualify their entire teams, plus RPI also sneaks in their mascot Puckman, it's all gone down hill. At this point the people at VFH spend more time deleting votes than they do counting them, so unless you have a massive fan base who is willing to press submit all day long, or have l33t skillz, you're out of luck. Yes, I know Clarkson fans almost single-handedly rigged the first VFH, almost leading to a Todd White, Dan Murphy, JF Houle sweep, but that's beside the point, even then the process was just as flawed and irrelevant as it is today. In the end, VFH has just become nothing more than an extravagant site counter or popularity contest, instead of a way of promoting players that you may never have heard of for their accomplishments.

Anyhow, since this really seems to be a throw away vote at this point, I’m going to have to go with Matt Auffrey as my choice for the Hobey Baker Award this year. He is having a solid season for the Junior-A Kitchener Rangers with 31 points in 35 games. He’s already got 95 votes, and if we play our cards right and vote every day like the system encourages us, he could be the OHL’s first ever Hobey Baker Award winner.