It's been almost two years since a lockout almost ruined the sport. Now the league has baited, misled, and rejected its fans. The NHL has hit a new low. It's turned the All-Star Game—an event that's supposed to be about giving people what they want—into a repudiation of the game's most loyal supporters.

There are all kinds of facts and figures, even an interview with the guy who set of the voting robot that may have pushed the NHL into being forced to fudge the totals. The most amusing part of the story is when it's revealed that the NHL not only adjusted the final tallies, they did so in such an incompetent way that covering their tracks would have been impossible. Maybe we can't vote Rory Fitzpatrick into the All-Star Game, but we can always count on the NHL to be the NHL.

The NHL's All-Star Voting Disaster [Slate]
Did 100,000 NHL All-Star Votes For Rory Fitzpatrick Just Disappear? [Off Wing Opinion]

But some aren't going so quietly into that night. An ongoing forum post at SomethingAwful.com purports to detail just how the NHL rigged the voting against Fitzpatrick, switching votes and making sure he didn't sully the sport's "good name." Here's an excerpt:

In very short form (I can explain more if you like) - during the week of Dec 20 - Dec 26, a full 19% of the votes cast for Western Conference D-men went to write-in candidates NOT named Rory Fitzpatrick. In any other week, this never exceeded 4%. Coincidentally, this is the same week that Rory dropped from 2nd to 3rd in the voting.

He also grabbed 22% of the total votes reported between Dec 12-Dec 20, while Niedermayer and Lidstrom each grabbed 8%. During the week for Dec20-Dec 26, Niedermayer and Lidstrom grabbed 16% each, while Rory only grabbed 10. The Dec 20-Dec 26 week also got those two about 30,000 more votes apiece than the previous 3 weeks, while Rory lost nearly 2/3rds of his total from the previous week and well more than half of the previous 3 weeks (150,000 Dec12-Dec20, and 60,000 between Dec20-Dec26).

It's all very complicated, and involves math; you can better understand the theory at the link than we could even pretend to try here. But it's a conspiracy theory, and if the Web isn't good for a solid conspiracy theory, well, jeez, it really is just good for porn then, we guess.

Vote For Rory: The NHL Is Rigging This For Sure [SomethingAwful.com]