Let’s just get to the point here. The NHL Awards were handed out in Las Vegas Thursday night to complete the process of announcing them. As a member of the Professional Hockey Writers Association, I am one of the many voters on the NHL Awards.
I have a vote for the Hart, Norris, Selke, Lady Byng, Masterton and Calder Trophies as well as the NHL All-Star and All-Rookie teams. As a member of the Buffalo chapter of the PHWA, I also cast a ballot for the Sabres nominee for the Masterton Trophy.
With all that out of the way, here are my ballots and my thought process on why I voted the way I did, in brief.
HART TROPHY
Winner: Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado Avalanche
Ballot:
1. Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado Avalanche
2. Nikita Kucherov, Tampa Bay Lightning
3. Artemi Panarin, New York Rangers
4. Connor McDavid, Edmonton Oilers
5. Auston Matthews, Toronto Maple Leafs
All season long MacKinnon proved, in my eyes, that he was vital to the success of the Avalanche and one of the elite players throughout the year. Goal scoring, point production, all-around performance—it was hard to be steered away from MacKinnon.
Kucherov ultimately made it a very tough call given how he performed all season and helped will the Lightning into the playoffs. Just an outstanding season for him. Panarin had a brilliant year with the Rangers in helping them to the Presidents’ Trophy and was worthy of recognition for that. After how tough things went for him at the end of last season, seeing him pop off this year was fantastic.
McDavid is the top player in the game, yes, that goes without saying. This is almost Barry Bonds-like territory for him. He’s so good and so dominant all year long that it’s virtually expected out of him. His brilliance is taken for granted a bit and, yeah, I helped contribute to that by voting him fourth on my ballot. He could arguably win it every year and it would be hard to argue against.
Matthews’s season was equally fantastic and scoring 69 goals gets all the attention, but his all-around play is just as good. The Maple Leafs were superb because of him.
NORRIS TROPHY
Winner: Quinn Hughes, Vancouver Canucks
Ballot
1. Quinn Hughes, Vancouver Canucks
2. Roman Josi, Nashville Predators
3. Gustav Forsling, Florida Panthers
4. Adam Fox, New York Rangers
5. Miro Heiskanen, Dallas Stars
Josi had an outstanding year, but Hughes was so far beyond everyone else in how he controlled the game from the blue line and the way he poured on the offense from the position. Just an electrifying season for him in Vancouver and it’s been wonderful to see his game grow since coming into the NHL.
This isn’t to take anything away from how damn good Josi is. He’s a major reason the Predators got to the playoffs this year despite expectations they would not be there. The way he controls the pace of play and sets up his teammates and defends in his end of the ice is special.
Thought I was going to be on an island voting Forsling third, but it turned out another writer had him second on theirs. I was joined by five other voters that also voted him third. He flew under the radar because it’s Florida for the most part but also because guys like Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour have more highlights to their game. Forsling is just all-around awesome in how he defends and helps create offense as well. He’s officially no longer under the radar.
Fox being the top defenseman on the best team in the regular season means he’s going to be in mind for everyone and his play is almost secondary to the star power elsewhere in the Rangers lineup. He’s too good to ignore in reality, however.
Heiskanen got the call for my fifth-place vote because Dallas’ team defense was really good and Heiskanen does so many of the little things spot on perfect. Take that with how he handles the game at both ends and it was an easy call to vote for him. Only question for me was where he’d land on the ballot.
CALDER TROPHY
Winner: Connor Bedard, Chicago Blackhawks
Ballot
1. Connor Bedard, Chicago Blackhawks
2. Brock Faber, Minnesota Wild
3. Tyson Foerster, Philadelphia Flyers
4. Luke Hughes, New Jersey Devils
5. Pyotr Kochetkov, Carolina Hurricanes
The feel-good story waiting to happen was Faber winning this and my debate between him and Bedard was very difficult.
Bedard’s performance on a truly bad Chicago team was excellent and all parts of his game that were hyped up coming out of junior hockey came as advertised. He was the best offensive player in this year’s crew of eligible rookies and scoring in the NHL is really freakin’ hard.
But so is playing defense as a young player and Faber was a revelation. The Wild didn’t have the success they hoped for this season and perhaps that cut into the attention Faber got. Maybe if the Wild were a 100-point team again with Faber leading the way on the blue line we’re having a different discussion about who won.
In the end I went with Bedard because of what he did while sorting through being a No. 1 pick, getting his jaw broken and coming back from that strong, and doing as well as he did on a team that was just brutally bad. This was not an easy decision nor one I took lightly.
Foerster really impressed me with how he handled himself all season and the way he was able to be such a strong player all-around. The offensive numbers don’t grab your attention, but his ability to defend as strong as he did and to be an effective player on the penalty kill as a rookie stood out.
I have a lot of sympathy for Luke Hughes. Like with Faber, playing defense in the NHL so young is impossibly difficult and Hughes was able to pile up points like mad on the blue line. That was really impressive to see and being essentially forced into top-four minutes because of injuries on the Devils blue line made this entire season a learning experience that had a lot of successes. There’s work to be done in his game still, but the sky is the limit.
Kochetkov got the final vote because it was at last a season where he played a lot in goal for Carolina and performed extremely well. Being an older rookie helped, but goalie timelines are always so deeply odd.
SELKE TROPHY
Winner: Aleksander Barkov, Florida Panthers
Ballot:
1. Aleksander Barkov, Florida Panthers
2. Jason Robertson, Dallas Stars
3. Jordan Staal, Carolina Hurricanes
4. Adam Lowry, Winnipeg Jets
5. Kevin Fiala, Los Angeles Kings
Selke is the one award I attempt to do as much research as possible to try and get my ballot completely right in my mind. Judging the best defensive forward is so difficult because metrics are tricky and while offense is still a vital thing, it can’t be the main motivation for how to vote on the award.
Barkov, for me, was the runaway winner for this award. How he matches up with everyone’s top lines throughout the year and the way he’s able to contain them with regularity is truly enjoyable to watch. Seeing how well he handled Connor McDavid head-to-head in the Stanley Cup Final highlighted what makes him so good.
Robertson is about as unappreciated for his defensive work as anyone out there. He’s supremely good at the way he matches up and while he took heat in the playoffs for his offense going cold, it was the other side of the ice which continued to stay strong.
Staal has always been a strong defender throughout his career, but the way he does it in Carolina, especially now that he’s older, shows that having all the veteran wiles to go along with the natural ability makes him a supremely good defensive forward.
Like Staal, Adam Lowry does the same for Winnipeg. He’s a great matchup center, he handles the hard assignments with aplomb, and he’s outstanding all around with his faceoffs and physical play. He’s just an excellent player to have out there when the Jets need to keep an opponent quiet for the night.
Fiala got my last vote much in part thanks to the loads of research I did. A lot of it entails combing through Natural Stat Trick and Evolving Hockey and analyzing how the shot and expected goal metrics work in conjunction with how his teammates perform with and without him. Fiala’s numbers all were extremely good in those areas and while I understand there’s a quality of competition and situational aspect to this, a guy still has to do the work.
As the voting turned out, it appeared I was the only person to recognize him for his efforts. Here’s to hoping it can help earn him a few more bucks down the road.
LADY BYNG TROPHY
Winner: Jaccob Slavin, Carolina Hurricanes
Ballot
1. Jaccob Slavin, Carolina Hurricanes
2. Elias Pettersson, Vancouver Canucks
3. Jesper Bratt, New Jersey Devils
4. Nick Schmaltz, Arizona Coyotes
5. Sean Monahan, Winnipeg Jets
I’m not sure anyone out there is clamoring for reasons why this ballot was measured out the way I did it, but it’s equal parts minutes played per game and penalty minutes and how well these players stay out of the box. All five of them, to me, managed to be the most gentlemanly by staying on the ice as much as possible. If your gripes are strongest for me here, I suggest taking a walk outside for a while.
This is how I voted for the NHL All-Star teams and the All-Rookie team. These basically followed how I voted on awards. There’s not a lot of minutiae that goes into this aside from how you’d see my extended ballot for some awards (Norris, Calder).
NHL All-Star Team
Center
1. Nathan MacKinnon
2. Connor McDavid
3. Auston Matthews
Right Wing
1. Nikita Kucherov
2. David Pastrnak
3. Sam Reinhart
Left Wing
1. Artemi Panarin
2. Filip Forsberg
3. Kirill Kaprizov
Defense
1. Quinn Hughes
2. Roman Josi
3. Gustav Forsling
4. Adam Fox
5. Miro Heiskanen
6. Cale Makar
Goaltender
1. Connor Hellebuyck
2. Thatcher Demko
3. Jeremy Swayman
NHL ALL-ROOKIE TEAM
Forward
1. Connor Bedard
2. Tyson Foerster
3. Logan Cooley
Defense
1. Brock Faber
2. Luke Hughes
Goaltender
1. Pyotr Kochetkov