Thursday, March 17, 2011

Awards Watch: March


Hart Trophy:
  1. Tim Thomas--leads by a healthy margin in GVT despite not getting as much playing time. Last time anyone had anything close to a .938 over a full season was 1998-1999 (Dominik Hasek's .937). That was the only time, too--Thomas may be authoring the greatest goalie season in NHL history.
  2. Jonathan Toews--2nd in GVT for skaters, kills his minutes, above 57% in faceoffs, and now up to 9th in scoring, just as the Blackhawks are finally making a run. Not to detract from his being here, but it's in no small part a product of some of the other top skaters having Hart-rivals on their very teams.
  3. Steven Stamkos--Leads the Richard race by seven goals and is 2nd in points, playing power versus power on 2nd-toughs.
  4. Daniel Sedin--league's leading scorer. He clocks in so low because Henrik Sedin, Ryan Kesler, and Roberto Luongo are all also having individual trophy-esque seasons.
  5. Pekka Rinne--lost in the Tim Thomas talk is how Rinne has raced up the goalie leaderboards to sit in 2nd.
Just missed: Henrik Lundqvist, Martin St. Louis, Corey Perry, Henrik Sedin, Sidney Crosby

Norris Trophy:
  1. Kris Letang
  2. Lubomir Visnovsky
  3. Nicklas Lidstrom
  4. Keith Yandle--Yawn, same top-4 as last time.
  5. Shea Weber--Up to 9th in defenseman points, playing shutdown while at it.
Just missed: Ryan Suter, John-Michael Liles, Zdeno Chara, Tobias Enstrom, Dustin Byfuglien

Vezina Trophy:
  1. Tim Thomas-still great.
  2. Pekka Rinne--a clear 2nd.
  3. Carey Price--recent hot streak puts him back on sv% leaderboard, and no one has played more games (Kiprusoff and Ward are tied with Price with 61 GP).
  4. Roberto Luongo--getting better as the season rolls along.
  5. Jonas Hiller--I leave Hiller on because of how amazing he was for Anaheim prior to this bout with "vertigo" he's been having.
Just missed: Henrik Lundqvist, Niklas Backstrom, Marc-Andre Fleury, Kari Lehtonen

Selke Trophy:
  1. Ryan Callahan
  2. Henrik Zetterberg
  3. Teemu Selanne
  4. Alexei Ponikarovsky
  5. Pavel Datsyuk--I don't see much of a case for changing the order from last time.
Just missed out: Artem Anisimov, Martin Hanzal, Jay McClement, Brandon Dubinsky, Pascal Dupuis

Calder Trophy:
  1. Michael Grabner--lucky or not, Grabner is scoring lots of goals, and with very little power play time, too.
  2. John Carlson--stud defenseman had a great game against Chicago, continuing to play shutdown minutes and still beating them.
  3. Jeff Skinner--leads rookies in points. His atrocious faceoff percentage hurts, though.
  4. Logan Couture--leads rookies in goals, but has cooled off in the last couple of months. San Jose's other guns are beginning to find their groove, so his production is not as important as it was earlier in the season.
  5. Sergei Bobrovsky--starting goalie for the best team in the East. I give the edge to Bob over Corey Crawford since Bob has consistently been on the leaderboard, but the two are truly neck-and-neck: Crawford-Bobrovsky 42-42 GP, 26-25 W, .925-.923 ESsv%, .917-.915 sv%, 2.30-2.58 GAA (at the time of this writing).
Just missed out: Corey Crawford, Travis Hamonic, Taylor Hall, Cam Fowler, Kevin Shattenkirk

Jack Adams Award:
  1. Guy Boucher (TBL)--Fiery coach is very good at playing matchups.
  2. Alain Vigneault (VAN)--coach of the best team in the league.
  3. Dan Bylsma (PIT)--and...Crosby is skating again. Look out. Pens have hung tough without Sid and Geno, but slowly, they're starting to get healthy again (Kunitz also returned a couple of days ago).
  4. Jacques Martin (MTL)--still going strong.
  5. Bruce Boudreau (WSH)--hey, taking your team from middling to top-5 in defense (as measured in goals) and penalty killing is pretty good coaching.
Just missed out: Barry Trotz (NSH), Joel Quenneville (CHI), Peter Laviolette (PHI), Mike Babcock (DET), Jacques Lemaire (NJD)

Richard Trophy:
  1. Steven Stamkos (43)
  2. Daniel Sedin (28)
  3. Corey Perry (36)
  4. Ryan Kesler (36)
  5. Patrick Sharp (34)
Art Ross Trophy:
  1. Daniel Sedin (92)
  2. Steven Stamkos (86)
  3. Henrik Sedin (86)
  4. Martin St. Louis (83)
  5. Corey Perry (75)
Jennings Trophy
  1. Roberto Luongo (team: 2.28 goals against per game)
  2. Pekka Rinne (2.30)
  3. Tim Thomas (2.33)
  4. Michal Neuvirth (2.38)
  5. Marc-Andre Fleury (2.38)

Here are my leaders by version of Awards Watch:



No comments:

Post a Comment