NHL Awards
I took a stab at guessing the end-of-year awards winners at the beginning of the year [some were just a bit off] but truth be told I don’t get into the ceremony of actually handing out the awards. I am pretty sure I have never watched the awards show. I’m not much of an Academy Awards, Grammys, or any of the MTV award shows person either.
Bruce MacLeod does vote on several of the awards so it was interesting in reading what he had to say.
On the Hart trophy:
– Nicklas Lidstrom finished fourth in the Hart voting. That was Lidstrom’s highest ever finish in the MVP race. His previous best finish was sixth in 2007. He was seventh in 2006 and eighth in 2003. It’s funny to hear players like Chris Chelios say that Lidstrom should be a Hart finalist. He’s right because somewhere along the line Lidstrom should have won a Hart let alone just finish in the top three of the voting. But the players never back him for the Pearson either.
I’d agree with this. There was no question Alexander Ovechkin deserved the Hart, but it’s also hard to believe Lidstrom hasn’t at least been a finalist once. When Japers’ Rink discovered an Ocho Hart trophy t-shirt it confirmed what pretty much everyone expected. I’m guessing Caps fans will like that t-shirt more than Pens fans will like this hat.
More NHL marketing genius!
According to Bruce Norris Nick’s domination remains strong.
– This was Lidstrom’s biggest runaway with the Norris voting. He got 127 of 134 first-place votes. His point total (1,313) was more than double that of runner-up Dion Phaneuf (561). Brian Rafalski finished ninth in the Norris voting between Chris Pronger and Scott Neidermayer. Ninth is a fair finish for Rafalski.
If Dion is the runner-up then that sounds about right. It would be interesting to see where Chris Chelios finished in the voting. I’m guessing it was pretty far down the list. I doubt Kronwall was ranked very highly but that could change next season if he can stay healthy and play at a similar level to where he played this season.
Finally I’ll take a look at what I thought was the biggest shock amongst Red Wings award-winners - Pavel Datsyuk winning the Selke. I posted a link to a statistical analysis that indicated he should have won the award last year, so I wasn’t shocked that he won the award, just that he ended up beating out Hank Zetterberg. Well he wasn’t the only one. Here’s Bruce.
– The Selke voters (and I’m one) finally caught up with the new look of Detroit’s forwards. Two years ago, Kris Draper finished sixth in Selke voting and Zetterberg ninth. Last year, Zetterberg was seventh in Selke voting, but Draper was a close eighth. Datsyuk was way down in 20th place. A lot of people nationally still looked at Draper and Kirk Maltby as Detroit’s shut-down forwards. I even heard that said this year in Montreal when the Red Wings played there. I thought Datsyuk was Selke worthy last season. This season, he got a league-best 43 first-place votes in winning the award. Zetterberg was second in first-place votes with 22, but finished third in voting behind John Madden.
So Z was actually third in voting! That’s pretty crazy, but I suspect he’s going to be a finalist for quite a while, and his performance in killing several 3-on-5 shorthanded penalties will likely earn a few more votes next season.
I wasn’t surprised Bruce Boudreau beat out Mike Babcock for the Jack Adams given the remarkable turnaround Washington had this season. At least Babcock was a finalist so I’m cool with that given the season he had. There’s at least three more years for Babs to lock up a Jack Adams.
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