Tuesday, May 01, 2007

NHL Award Nominees Announced

Today, they announced the nominees for the NHL awards. Here are my picks for who I would have voted for. Today, I will give my reactions to the nominations and who I think will win.

Selke Trophy Rod Brind'Amour Carolina Hurricanes, Sami Pahlsson Anaheim Ducks, Jay Pandolfo New Jersey Devils. I picked all the nominees on my ballot, which surprises me. I expected somebody who had a good offensive year but is defensively responsible (like Chris Drury or Henrik Zetterberg) to get a nomination, but they did better and picked the actual defensive forwards. I think Brind'Amour should win.

Lady Byng Trophy Pavel Datsyuk Detroit Red Wings, Joe Sakic Colorado Avalanche, Martin St Louis Tampa Bay Lightning. I picked Tomas Kaberle of Toronto as a nominee instead of Sakic. Sakic's 46 PIMs should be too much for serious Byng consideration when Tomas Kaberle put up only 20 while tying for eighth in scoring among defencemen. I guess nobody notices the defencemen when they are not among the overall scoring leaders. St Louis should win.

Adams Trophy Lindy Ruff Buffalo Sabres, Michel Therrien Pittsburgh Penguins, Alain Vigneault Vancouver Canucks. What an awful job of picking nominees. None should be there. I wrote something about why Therrien is a poor pick. Vigneault is only nominated because of the year Roberto Luongo had in goal. I guess Lindy Ruff should win because he is the most qualified of a bad bunch. If they stop picking the coach of the most improved team instead of the best coach, they should be looking at Jacques Lemaire of Minnesota and Ted Nolan of the New York Islanders. It's a crime neither are even nominated.

Calder Trophy Evgeni Malkin Pittsburgh Penguins, Jordan Staal Pittsburgh Penguins, Paul Stastny Colorado Avalanche. Staal is a very interesting rookie but Anze Kopitar is a better nominee. He was forgotten on the West Coast in Los Angeles after the Kings fell out of contention. Malkin should win.

Norris Trophy Nicklas Lidstrom Detroit Red Wings, Scott Niedermayer Anaheim Ducks, Chris Pronger Anaheim Ducks. These three defencemen were far out in front of the rest of the field. Lidstrom should win.

Vezina Trophy Martin Brodeur New Jersey Devils, Miikka Kiprusoff Calgary Flames, Henrik Lundqvist New York Rangers, Roberto Luongo Vancouver Canucks. Four nominees because there was a tie for third in the voting (likely between Kiprusoff and Lundqvist). I only picked three nominees and did not have Lundqvist. I feel Kiprusoff had a better year in that he was much more heavily worked than Lundqvist (facing 263 more shots) in a similar games played with the same saves percentage. I think Brodeur wins.

Hart Trophy Martin Brodeur New Jersey Devils, Sidney Crosby Pittsburgh Penguins, Roberto Luongo Vancouver Canucks. I think the goalie vote splits and Crosby wins by a large margin. I am disappointed that nobody saw fit to nominate Nicklas Lidstrom or Joe Thornton who had better years than the goalies.

Pearson Trophy Sidney Crosby Pittsburgh, Vincent LeCavalier Tampa Bay Lightning, Roberto Luongo Vancouver Canucks. I would pick this along the same lines as the Hart with Crosby winning. Surprised Luongo gets nominated over Brodeur in this case. I think LeCavalier was chosen over more deserving Thornton and Lidstrom due to leading the league in goals.

Here is the TSN story on the award nominees.

Comments:
I think Brind'Amour should win.

I'll probably cover this on BoC, but I think that is a pretty bad call. I wouldn't mind a Pandolfo win, but Brind'Amour is outrageous, I think.

The guy plays more power play than penalty kill time, and isn't facing nearly the level of 5-on-5 competition as the other two.

I understand that because he's Rod Brind'Amour, he's going to be the favorite, but I will say that in my opinion, he's the least deserving of the trio.
 
Picking the Lady Byng winners based purely on PIMs is faulty. Sakic is a classy athlete and represents the sportsmanship+skill aspect of the award. Somehow, most writers started turning low PIMs into sportsmanlike play.

Having low PIMs is a benefit to a team, but it doesn't necessarily mean class and sportsmanship.
 
If we look at some numbers from hockey nmbers Brind'Amour is the lone forward who does well in terms of goals scored while he is on the ice and a lack of goals allowed who is not an offense only guy. The fact he has some offensive talent, should not be held against his defensive game. I bet he wins by a large margin over Pandolfo and Pahlsson.

As for the Byng, PIMs is nt a perfect measure of sportsmanship, but when a defenceman manages less than half of a forward its a pretty clear sign the defenceman plays a more sportsmanlike game. I bet Sakic finishes a distant third in voting.
 
I bet he wins by a large margin over Pandolfo and Pahlsson.

Sure, he's got 82 points (30 on the power play) and he's a plus.

But in terms of who's really the defensive forwards--the guys who are truly assigned to stop and shadow the opponents' top scorers, Pahlsson and Pandolfo both are used nearly exclusively in that role.

Brind'Amour wins a ton of faceoffs and is a recognizable name. He's the favorite to win it, but I think the other two have put better defensive years together.

Behind the Net has a nice "quality of opposition" metric that tracks who players are playing against even-strength. On that metric, Pandolfo ranks #2, Pahlsson ranks #10, and Brind'Amour #214 (out of 676). His minutes, generally, have been much more pedestrian and much less about being a defensive 'shutdown' specialist.
 
You define defensive forward as a shadow type - I do not think that is necessarily correct. The reason Brind'Amour's minutes appear average in quality of opposition is bcause he plays so many minutes. He plays the hard minutes and the easy minutes. He was the third highest forward in ice time per game (behind Martin St Louis and Brad Richards from a Tampa team that played almost the whole year on a shortened bench). You cannot have the toughest quality of opposition playing that much time. Would you think more of Brind'Amour as a defensive forward if they took away the easier ice time to play him less? Then his numbers would compare to Pandolfo and Pahlsson.
 
Would you think more of Brind'Amour as a defensive forward if they took away the easier ice time to play him less?

Maybe. I would definitely think more of his point total and plus-minus as it relates to the other two.

I'll have to take a closer look at Brind'Amour's match-ups, but if he isn't matching up against the Jagrs and Kovalchuks, it stands to reason that he's not playing the role of defensive forward on his team. If that's the case, I don't see why he should win a league-wide award for his defensive ability.
 
Can't agree with your Adams comments. Dismissing a guy because he has a Luongo isn't reasonable - how smart was Scotty Bowman to keep running out Robinson-Lapointe-Savard-Dryden-Lafleur etal?

Vigneault re-invented the Canucks - they are an entirely different team in every way than at any time in the past. It takes more than having an outstanding goalie to accomplish what they did this year - it takes total buy in from 22 other guys as well, and that is not an easy task. If it was, perhaps whoever has been running through the Florida coaching fraternity the last seven years would be represented here?

Axeman
 
How smart was Scotty Bowman? He won pretty much everywhere he went. He even took the expansion St louis Blues to the finals three times. But by the poor method of chosing coach of the year as coach of the most improved team he only won the Adams Trophy twice in a 30 year coaching career.

Vancouver improved this year. Its pretty obvious that the main reason was that they had a goalie. Roberto Luongo is a huge improvement over Dan Cloutier and Alex Auld. Does that make Vigneault a genius? No it makes him a coach who happens to be there when goaltending improved significantly.
 
How smart was Scotty Bowman? He won pretty much everywhere he went. He even took the expansion St louis Blues to the finals three times. But by the poor method of chosing coach of the year as coach of the most improved team he only won the Adams Trophy twice in a 30 year coaching career.

Vancouver improved this year. Its pretty obvious that the main reason was that they had a goalie. Roberto Luongo is a huge improvement over Dan Cloutier and Alex Auld. Does that make Vigneault a genius? No it makes him a coach who happens to be there when goaltending improved significantly.


I didn't say Bowman was not a great coach. He clearly was. Read it again, wiht the irony /off. Aside from that, yes, he got St. Louis to the final as an expansion team. Of course, the league set up at the time required an expansion team in the finals - it was East vs. West, and the entire West was the new teams. So the competition to get to the final wasn't that intense. Having said that, it wasn't Pittsburgh or LA going to those finals.

My point was this - yes, Vigneault cert6ainly benefitted from having arguably the best goalie in the game on his club. But what he also did was completely change the style of play to accomodate this wonderful asset, and more importantly, get star players to buy into the change. That isn't goaltending, it's coaching, and it's the toughest thing to do in coaching. He may or may not be worthy of the Adams Trophy - there is clearly a very trong case for several others. But he equally should not be dismissed because he had a great goalie.

Axeman
 
Dominik Hasek deserved a nomination at the very least for the Vezina trophy this year. He may have played in fewer games than the other goalies but he posted a phenomenal 38-11 record with 2.05 GAA. Those are great numbers for any goalie, throw in the fact that he's 42 years old. He deserves a nomination as much if not more than any of those goalies.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?