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Sidney Crosby and Duncan Keith leading the All-Star vote, write-in candidates having success

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The NHL has released the leader board for the 2011 All-Star Game in Raleigh, North Carolina today and while most of the names aren’t going to be a big surprise to you, there’s one player whose write-in campaign has earned him a spot atop the rankings of one position. Before you get your hopes up too high, no, it’s not Paul “Biz Nasty” Bissonette.

As for the leaders right now, at forward Sidney Crosby is the top vote getter overall with 118,775 votes. Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals and Jonathan Toews of the Chicago Blackhawks round out the forwards corps.NHL leading goal scorer Steve Stamkos is just over 1,000 votes behind Toews for third place. With the way Stamkos is lighting things up on the score sheet, it’s not outlandish to think he’ll start picking up plenty of votes. Patrick Kane is fifth in voting amongst forwards. Clearly Chicago fans are pretty good at stuffing the ballot boxes.

On defense, Duncan Keith leads the way in voting there with 82,968 votes, good for second overall in voting. Nicklas Lidstrom of the Detroit Red Wings is second on the blue line. Chris Pronger, Drew Doughty, and Kimmo Timonen round out the rest of the top five. Apparently Flyers fans are very excited by their top pairing on defense.

The real story comes in goal where Carey Price, who is not on the ballot, leads the way with 71,199 votes. For a write-in campaign the Montreal Canadiens fans are certainly working in solidarity to make sure their man and top player can get into the game. Second amongst goalies is Sergei Bobrovsky with 58,101 votes. Bobrovsky also is not on the ballot. Meanwhile, balloted players Tim Thomas and Jaroslav Halak are trailing in third and fourth place respectively while Marc-Andre Fleury of Pittsburgh is fifth.

Say what you will about All-Star voting, but the write-in campaigns that fans of both the Flyers and Habs are doing are impressive and the write-in campaigns for some players are indeed impressive. Claude Giroux of Philadelphia (11th) and Tomas Plekanec (13th) of Montreal are showing up well amongst forwards, meanwhile Kris Letang of Pittsburgh (8th) and P.K. Subban of Montreal (9th)are doing well on defense, rating ahead of previous All-Stars like Zdeno Chara.

Devils superstar Ilya Kovalchuk has 7,769 votes putting him well down and out on the list for forwards and behind write-in campaign candidates Bissonette and Sean Avery. Avery is doing very well pulling in over 17,000 votes. Biz Nasty has over 9,o0o votes and is the leading vote getter amongst Coyotes players. When it rains, it pours for Kovalchuk.