Buffalo Sabres’ Zemgus Girgensons Leads All-Star Voting

Buffalo Sabres center Zemgus Girgensons leads the NHL All Star vote… by, like, a lot

Wait… what?

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So I’d like to preface everything by saying that I have nothing against Zemgus Girgensons. He’s a pretty cool dude, once you get past the fact that the Sabres love to stomp down on the Boston Bruins and break my heart on the regular.

Girgensons, selected fourteenth overall at the 2012 NHL Entry Draft, is a perfectly fine player. He’s got seven goals and six assists in twenty-four NHL contests this season, and leads all Buffalo forwards in ice time. It would be pretty cool to see this giant Latvian man-boy crack the NHL All Star Games roster; don’t get me wrong.

He’s got nearly 400,000 votes, though… which is almost 160,000 more than last week’s voting leader P.K. Subban, and is nearly 200,000 more than Sidney Crosby. Who’s, you know. Also a center. Also, one who the majority of casual NHL fans have actually heard of.

Of course, assuming that North American NHL fans have anything to do with this is probably why we’re all so baffled. Per the team’s official site, it seems that Zemgus has his entire home country out there voting for him.

"“He’s a very popular man over in Latvia,” Sabres coach Ted Nolan said Monday. “I think from the Sochi Olympics he got his name out there a little bit more.”"

Fellow Sabres skater Marcus Foligno corroborated this story, suggesting that maybe every single person in Latvia has voted for him.

Girgensons admits that the overwhelming number of votes doesn’t really surprise him, adding that people back home will get up at four a.m. just to watch his games. He doesn’t seem all that perturbed by the fact that he’s also ahead of both Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, either — although he did suggest that playing alongside them would be pretty cool.

If you think his votes will probably taper off once the entire population of Latvia has checked his name off on the ballot, though, think again — it’s entirely likely that his newfound fame will earn him that many more votes from here in the States and Canada.

*I may have voted for him now too.

Buffalo Sabres center Zemgus Girgensons leads the NHL All Star vote… by, like, a lot

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