The NHL Awards were handed out last night in Las Vegas and many of the media types who voted on them were there to cover the event and, no doubt, have a much more subdued (read: less expensive) version of fun than all the candidates surely experienced in Sin City.
There used to be a sort of, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” element to this whole process because, until last year, the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association did not release the results of its membership’s annual vote. Transparency rules the day now, though, and as such, I’m here to offer insight into my logic while voting on the Hart, Calder, Norris, Selke and Lady Byng.
Let’s start with the big boy.
Hart Trophy
1. Nikita Kucherov
2. Brad Marchand
3. Sidney Crosby
4. Ryan O’Reilly
5. Darcy Kuemper
Rant Alert: The language surrounding this award is an annual source of anguish for me. I know Most Valuable Player is engrained in sports lexicon and I love a good “M-V-P!” chant as much as the next guy. It really does roll off the tongue. That said, it’s such a nebulous concept. Based on how the sport is set up, an A-plus goalie on a “C” team should probably win the Hart every time. That’s how Darcy Kuemper got a vote from me.
Except, of course, some people don’t want goalies to be eligible for this trophy. Others say you can’t win MVP if you miss the playoffs: Are those same people clucking, “If only Connor McDavid was more valuable to the Edmonton Oilers, they’d be in the playoffs!”
(McDavid, by the way, absolutely suffers from fantastic player fatigue: Ho-hum, another awesome season from the best player in the world who just so happens to skate for a bad team. He still wins the “Guy you’d start a team with” award indefinitely.)
Here’s what I’ve settled on: Whose season is most worthy of holding up to the hockey world and saying, ‘Hey, look what this guy did!’ The answer was really easy this year because Nikita Kucherov scored more points (128) in a season than any player in 25 years.
Say what you will about Brad Marchand, he was one of just six players to net 100 points this year, while also seeing 1:34 per game of penalty-killing duty. Marchand contributes offensively, defensively and intangibly while playing on the league’s best line. (He was also the only member of that trio not to miss significant time this year.)
Sidney Crosby had his best season points-wise since 2013-14 and is truly an all-around force. As for the guy who won the MVP trophy you really want — the Conn Smythe they hand out after the playoffs — Ryan O’Reilly was awesome when the St. Louis Blues were awful and awesome when they were stringing together 11-game win streaks.
Calder Trophy
1. Elias Pettersson
2. Rasmus Dahlin
3. Jordan Binnington
4. Brady Tkachuk
5. Miro Heiskanen
From the second Pettersson touched the ice, he showed the potential to be a franchise-defining, No. 1 centre. A couple stints on the injured list were not nearly enough to prevent him from getting my top vote. His production slowed toward the tail end of the season, but no freshman came close to displaying the wizardry we saw from Pettersson. That was especially true out of the gate, when he dazzled with five goals and eight points in his first five NHL contests before Florida’s Mike Matheson earned himself a two-game suspension for slamming the slender Swede to the ice.
Though I probably weigh games played the least when voting for rookie of the year — to me, it’s more about who soared the highest — I couldn’t completely dismiss the fact that Jordan Binnington, brilliant as he was, basically only played a third of the season. Rasmus Dahlin, unlike his Buffalo Sabres team, got stronger as the year progressed.
Norris Trophy
1. Mark Giordano
2. Brent Burns
3. Morgan Rielly
4. Dougie Hamilton
5. John Carlson
Giordano was always a classic late-bloomer, but this past season was ridiculous. The undrafted Flame has garnered fringe Norris votes in the past for his all-around play, but he vaulted himself into elite company with his age-35 campaign. Giordano smashed his previous personal best for points (56 to 74) and the only two defencemen in NHL history to post more points at that advanced (for pro sports) age are Ray Bourque (82 at age 35 in 1995-96) and Nicklas Lidstrom (80 at age 35 in 2005-06)
I dinged Victor Hedman for missing a dozen games.
Morgan Rielly led all blue-liners with 17 even-strength goals and Dougie Hamilton was No. 2 with 16. If you need a little more arm-twisting on Hamilton, consider that after a half-season of adjusting to his new surroundings in Carolina, he scored 15 goals in the 2019 portion of the calendar, four more than the next-closest D-man, who happens to be Giordano.
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Selke Trophy
1. Mark Stone
2. Aleksander Barkov
3. Ryan O’Reilly
4. Sean Couturier
5. Sidney Crosby
Admittedly, this was a bit of a lifetime achievement award for Stone, who has long been celebrated as one of the best two-way players in the league. If there’s a guy worthy of becoming the first winger to win the Selke since Dallas Stars dynamo Jere Lehtinen back in 2003, surely it’s Stone, the takeaways monster.
As for the two guys who’ve had a death grip on this award recently, Patrice Bergeron was limited to 65 games and though I’m sure Anze Kopitar remains a nightmare to play against, the 2018 winner wasn’t getting the award in a 60-point, minus-20 season.
Speaking of owning this trophy, you can put down in ink that Aleksander Barkov is going to win a bunch in the very near future.
Lady Byng Trophy
1. Aleksander Barkov
2. Morgan Rielly
3. Ryan O’Reilly
4. Matt Duchene
5. Sean Monahan
Barkov took four minor penalties throughout the course of his 96-point season. That’s a good enough PIM-to-points ratio for me and, as noted above in the Selke talk, this guy is destined for some stage time in Vegas, so let’s kick it off.
Morgan Rielly always draws extra consideration for the fact he was trying to become just the second defenceman since 1954 to win the award (Brian Campbell took the honour in 2012).
It’s incredible that O’Reilly can play such a defensively stout game without taking more penalties, even accidentally.
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