Regular Season Awards

The NHL regular season is over. Before the playoffs start, we might as well look back at who might win the various regular season awards. For the first time in a long time the answer of which players (and coach) should win is not so obvious. In order of easiest to hardest award to pick, here is who I would give awards to.

Lady Bing: Always given to a top scorer who stays out of the box, reigning champ Martin St. Louis should repeat as the Lady Bing winner. St. Louis racked up 12 penalty minutes in 81 games while finishing second in league scoring. Done and done.

Selke: Ryan Kesler, who has matured into one of the league’s top forwards mostly because he works hard every shift. Sure the goals are nice but I am just as happy to know he is out there killing a penalty or on the ice during the last minute of a game. He has always been one of the smartest hockey minds in the league, and now that he has gotten his temper (mostly) in check, Kesler has become a formidable force that would be a first line centre on many other teams.

Jack Adams: With apologies to Vigneault (best team) and Trotz (best team that should not be any good), this year’s top coach was Pittsburgh’s Dan Bylsma. If a team had one former Art Ross winner bow out to injury, they would be in trouble. But if that team lost a second former scoring champ they would surely tumble down the standings. Not the Penguins. They found a way to maintain a top-four seed despite losing Malkin and Crosby for much of the regular season. And a lot of the credit has to go to Bylsma, who turned Pittsburgh into a staunch defensive team (7th GAA) with superior penalty killing (1st). He was able to integrate numerous players into his system, including key contributors Paul Martin, Zbynek Michalek and James Neal. Hell, he was even able to get something out of Alexei Kovalev, a fact that should get him the award all by itself.

Vezina: The race for this award got rather interesting down the stretch, with a half dozen or so goalies vying for the hardware. Check out the stats for this goalie: T1 wins, 2nd GAA, 3rd save %. Yes, Roberto Luongo. Yet he probably won’t even be nominated for the Vezina. Neither will Fleury, Ward or Price. The likely candidates for the final three are Thomas, Rinne and Lundqvist. Tim Thomas should get the edge here. He has the best save % (.938) and GAA (2.00) by a considerable margin, plus he was T9 in wins (while losing 9 games in a shootout) while leading the Bruins to a division crown. I’d love Luongo to take it home, but it’s Thomas’s year for the Vezina. I guess Luongo will just have to settle for the Conn Smythe.

Calder: I think this might be one of the strongest rookie classes ever. Only history will tell, but check out the list of rookies who had an impact this year: Crawford, Grabner, Ennis, Stepan, Eberle, Hall, Fowler, Subban, Paajarvi, Carlson, Shattenkirk, Marchand. Plus Seguin (tough to put up numbers behind the strong group of forwards in Boston), Clitsome (19 points in 31 games. He’s a defenseman), Calvert (20 points in 42 games) and Omark (if he can ever figure out defense, watch out). But the real race for the prize comes down to Skinner and Couture. I would give the Calder to Logan Couture. Although Skinner scored seven more points (while playing all 82 games, compared to Couture’s 79), Couture had one more goal, six more game winning goals and four more power play goals. Couture was also plus 18 (Skinner plus 3) while playing for the division-winning Sharks. Skinner played for a Hurricanes team that dropped a giant egg when they could have made the playoffs.

Norris: Lidstrom, Visnovsky, or Weber? It’s a tough debate. Lidstrom had another great season, but compared to other Lidstrom vintages, this one is a little bit off. The points were there, but he finished with his first ever season as a minus player (-2). Couple this with the fact that Detroit ranked 23rd in GAA, and Lidstrom will have to settle for being nominated. So it comes down to the other two. Visnovsky had more points than Weber, a better plus/minus and more game-winning goals. Visnovsky should win, right? Nope. Shea Weber deserves the Norris. Why? Visnovsky had 52 hits this season. Weber: 211 hits. Anaheim finished 20th over all in goals against. Nashville finished 3rd. Weber averaged nearly an extra minute a game more than Visnovsky. I know there is a tendency to give the Norris to the D-man who puts up a lot of points, but Weber plays more minutes, hits more (and harder, way harder) and does more things defensively than Visnovsky. Plus, Visnovsky plays with several talented offensive players (with whom to rack up points) while Weber plays with Martin Erat and Sergei Kostitsyn (the only Preds with more points than Weber). It comes down to this: Visnovsky has been traded twice in the past few years. Would you trade Weber for Visnovsky? I wouldn’t. No chance. So why would I give the Norris to Visnovsky? I wouldn’t do that either.

Hart: This award really comes down to Daniel Sedin vs. Corry Perry. Sedin led the league in points, Perry led the league in goals. Both were killer on the PP and both play with excellent centremen (Getzlaf, H. Sedin). But I am picking Daniel Sedin. Why? Three reasons:

1. Daniel Sedin was the most dominant player on the most dominant team. The Canucks were head and shoulders above the rest of the NHL all season, and Daniel led the way. The Canucks wrapped up the President’s Trophy two weeks before the season ended, with Sedin winning the scoring title while finishing T5 in plus/minus (Perry, who was third in scoring, was T112 in plus/minus). Sedin has been consistently good all year.
2. Daniel Sedin can stay out of the penalty box. His 32 penalty minutes pale in comparison to Perry’s 104 penalty minutes. So what? So when Perry is in the penalty box that much, it hurts his team both on the scoreboard and because one of their top players cannot be on the ice. It is a fact that no player since Bobby Clarke 33 years ago has won the Hart trophy while gaining over 100 penalty minutes that season. Even former Hart winners Chris Pronger, Mark Messier and Eric Lindros toned down their trips to the sin bin in the years they were most valuable. Perry just took too much off the table in this respect.
3. Perry had a slight edge over Sedin in game winning goals (11-10). But if we factor in assists on game winning goals, Sedin has a sizable edge (11-6). Yes, Sedin passed to a teammate who would score the game winner more often than he scored himself. Considering he was 3rd in GWG, that is no small feat. Daniel Sedin is an excellent player who makes those around him better. That is exactly the type of player I consider to be the most valuable.