Crosby, Malkin, Toews, Fleury, Letang and Keith make the top six in All-Star voting

Week after week, we followed the fan voting for the 2011 NHL All-Star Game. In case you haven’t been keeping up, fans were able to pick their equivalent to a First NHL All-Star team with three forwards, two defensemen and one goalie. The league just announced the roster, which is comprised solely of Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks players. Here is the top six.

Forwards: Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews and Evgeni Malkin.

Defensemen: Kris Letang and Duncan Keith.

Goalie: Marc-Andre Fleury.

(In case you’re wondering, my ballot last night looked like this:

Forwards: Crosby, Steven Stamkos and Brad Richards.

Defensemen: Dustin Byfuglien and Nicklas Lidstrom.

Goalie: Tim Thomas.)

Here are some details regarding the voting results.

At the close of the 2011 NHL All-Star Fan Balloting presented by XM at 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday, more than 14.3 million total votes were registered. Crosby was the top-voted player with 635,509 total votes and first forward named to the 2011 All-Star Team; Chicago’s Toews tallied 407,676 total votes and Crosby’s Pittsburgh teammate Malkin tallied 376,887 to round out the top three forwards. Pittsburgh’s Letang was the top-voted defenseman with 477,960 total votes; he will be joined by fellow defenseman Duncan Keith of Chicago who received 382,162 votes. Pittsburgh’s Marc-Andre Fleury is the first goaltender named to the 2011 All-Star team with a total of 462,305 votes.

On January 11, the league will announce the remaining 36 players that will make up the NHL All-Star teams. After that, the team captains will be unveiled as well (along with alternate captains). Chicago Blackhawks head coach Joel Quenneville will be one of the coaches by default because he won the Stanley Cup in the 2010 playoffs. There will also be Western and Eastern Conference “co-coaches,” which will be determined by standings positions.

As you may remember, the two team captains will choose players based on a “fantasy draft” that might remind some people of their gym class days in which two kids chose teams. (Something tells me the last person chosen won’t resemble Martin Starr from Freaks & Geeks, though.) Here are some details regarding the fantasy draft process.

A coin toss will decide first pick with the team captains, joined by their two alternate captains, alternately drafting the 36 remaining All-Stars through 18 rounds. Each team will consist of 3 goalies, 6 defensemen and 12 forwards total. For sake of fairness in the draft, the captain and alternate captains for each team will consist of two forwards and one defenseman. Also, to ensure that the final draft picks are true selections and not simply predetermined due to position requirements, each team’s three goalies must be picked by the end of Round 10 and each team’s six defensemen must be picked by the conclusion of Round 15.

All-Star weekend will take place on Saturday, January 29th and Sunday, January 30th. To read more about the beloved skills competition and other festivities, click here. We’ll keep you informed as the full roster(s) are released and so on.