A history of the Bourque Trophy for best final season, another fake award

Last week, we wasted your valuable time and attention with a made-up award. And as often happens, you readers responded with “Yes, OK, but what if it we made it even weirder?”

Specifically, reader Stan D. saw our piece on the Carson Trophy, a fake award for best sophomore player, and wanted to know what an annual award would look like for the player with the best final season.

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce the Bourque Trophy. Named in honor of Phil for some reason Ray Bourque, and his final season in Colorado that saw him put up 59 points while finishing as a first-team all-star and Norris runner-up and the age of 40. I can’t remember how the playoffs went but hopefully those ended well for him too.

The rules: We’re looking for players who played their final season in a given year, although this is an NHL award, so players who subsequently head to Europe or elsewhere are fine. And while this award is very specifically for the best final season and not intended as a lifetime achievement award, voters will probably ignore this and factor in career accomplishments in close races. Stupid hockey writers, they’re the worst.

Finally, you may be wondering how the voters at the time would have known who had actually played their final season, given that some of these guys later attempted comebacks or went down to the AHL or tried to rehab injuries after what turned out to be their final season. Great point, and if this really bothers you, I’m going to suggest you take this whole thing a lot less seriously.

As with last time, we’ll head back to 2005 and cover the cap era. We probably won’t see as many great seasons as the Carson served up, but let’s see where this goes.

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A rooting guide to the PWHL's six teams

The PWHL is days away from its debut, and plenty of us are rooting for the league to succeed. That’s all well and good, but it’s not enough – to really get the full fan experience, you also need to pick a team to cheer for.

But which one? It’s an important decision, and we’re here to help. You can find detailed previews of each team here. But if you’re still on the fence when it comes to picking a bandwagon, let’s see if we can nudge you towards a well-informed decision.

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NHL weekend rankings: Flyers, Senators, and all my mistakes that nobody will see

Happy holidays, everyone. I’m pretty sure there’s some sort of sportswriter law that says I’m supposed to do some vaguely themed Christmas post today. But at the risk of losing my license, I’m going to take this in a different direction.

After all, everybody is off today, meaning I don’t have to worry about the (disturbingly large) percentage of my readers who tell me they read me when they’re supposed to be working. If you are reading, there’s a decent chance you’re distracted, either by screaming kids or arguing in-laws. And if you do happen to be enjoying a quiet day off, snuggled under a blanket with your screen and a cup of coffee, you’re probably in a good mood.

A smaller, distracted, generally chill audience? Feels like the perfect time to recap all the ways I’m terrible at my job.

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A modern history of the NHL’s sophomore of the year award, which does not exist

It doesn’t seem like we’re going to get much of a Calder race this year. Barring an injury or something very unexpected, the trophy for Rookie of the Year is going to go first overall pick Connor Bedard. He’s a huge favorite at all the sportsbooks, and our own writers had him as a unanimous pick in our most recent prediction panel. Do you know how much of a favorite you have to be for not even one writer to play the contrarian card? A big one. The race is all but over.

But forget the Calder. What about the Carson, the trophy awarded to the best second-year player in the NHL? It’s named after Jimmy Carson, who put up 55 goals and 107 points as a 19-year-old sophomore back in 1987-88, and it’s possible you’ve never heard of it before because I just made it up.

But it would be a cool award, right? And if it existed, we’d be watching a solid race play out. A so-so start by Matty Beniers would have opened the door to names like Wyatt Johnston, Kirill Marchenko and Andrei Kuzmenko up front, plus Jake Sanderson and Owen Power as blueline candidates. We could argue about that race all day, and arguing all day is lots of fun, according to the people who comment on my articles.

So today, let’s go back through the cap era and hand out the Carson Trophy to the best sophomore player, which is to say the best guy who’s one year removed from his final Calder-eligible season. Make some room in those trophy cases, gentlemen, there’s a new award in town.

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Weekend rankings: Sharks move up, Hurricanes don’t, and the most mediocre teams

We’re usually all about the top and bottom five here, but what about the stuck-in-the-middle brigade? Which teams have been the most mediocre so far this season?

We did this right around this time last year, and I kind of like it was a pre-holiday tradition. So before we get to the good and the bad, let’s spend some time on the merely meh.

It can be a tougher question than it sounds like. To start with, unlike just about every other league in the world, being .500 doesn’t make you mediocre in the NHL. Thanks to the loser point, being .500 in terms of points percentage is often pretty bad. Instead, I like to just look at wins and losses. Mix in goals differential, a few underlying stats, and bonus points for teams that rarely go streaking, and we can get a good sense of which team is muddling along the best. Or worst. Or in between. You get it.

And if you see your team on this list and feel insulted, well, remember that this time last year, the most middling team in the league was the Florida Panthers, and their season turned out pretty OK.

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