Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Handing out some awards at the NHL's quarter pole

We’re almost at the quarter-mark of the NHL schedule, which means it’s time to do a few things. First, and most importantly: Start wildly panicking if your team isn’t doing as well as they should be. You guys on that, Montreal and Edmonton? You are? Great, nice work as always.

For the rest of us, we may as well hand out some quarter-season awards. Sure, most of these will turn out to be regrettable in hindsight by the end of the year, and some of them will look bad within weeks. But that’s part of the fun.

So let’s do it. You can vote for your own picks right here with results revealed this week on Wednesday Night Hockey. In the meantime, here’s who we’d be handing out the tiny quarter-sized trophies to, based on the season’s first six weeks.

Most valuable player

Every sport that features an MVP award has the same debate over how exactly we should define “valuable.” Some see it as simply a fancy way of saying the best player, while others look for some deeper meaning related to a player’s relative importance to his teammates in terms of his team’s playoff chances.

Some years, one player emerges as the favourite under either definition and we can skip the semantic debate. This year, we may not be so lucky. Because based on the first quarter of the season, Hart Trophy voters could end up facing a dilemma: What do you do when the season’s two best performers are on the same team?

With Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos racking up big numbers while helping the Lightning to top spot in the standings, some will try to argue that they can’t be considered more valuable than someone like Connor McDavid or Johnny Gaudreau, who are the clear offensive leaders on their team. Others would point out that points aren’t everything, and that a two-way force like Anze Kopitar should get some consideration.

Of course, if we’re not going to just look at the top of the scoring race (like Hart voters usually do), we could make the case for a goalie or defenceman. That would bring guys like Sergei Bobrovsky, Alex Pietrangelo and Corey Crawford into the conversation. And then you’ve got guys who’ve missed time to injury, but are clearly their team’s most valuable players when healthy — that group would include Erik Karlsson and Auston Matthews.

Luckily, we fall into the category of voters who keep it simple. The league’s most valuable player is the one that’s having the best season, period. That means Kucherov gets the nod, edging out Stamkos. And we’ll toss Bobrovsky a third-place vote, if only because non-forwards rarely get enough Hart love.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet




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