2020 NHL Awards Ballot


The time has come. Members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association received their official ballots in the mail this week so it’s time to debate the NHL’s year-end awards, or at least the ones that matter the most. I had Michael Clifford on my podcast last week to dive into these so make sure you check out that conversation.

Before we dive in, I just wanted to highlight that these are awards voted on by hockey writers so that alone makes the process flawed. Writers are people, and people are biased. It’s impossible to be completely objective. Writers also love narratives. LOVE them. It’s what makes these conversations fun. I rue the day that NHL analysts come up with an all-encompassing stat that really works like baseball’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR).

These days, MLB MVP ballots look like a carbon copy of FanGraphs’ WAR page. It isn’t long into a debate about someone’s MVP candidacy that their WAR comes up. And at that point, the conversation basically ends.

The godfather of analytics Bill James puts it quite succinctly:


So here I am to say that I am thankful for our flawed process! I am not a member of the PHWA and do not have a vote, but I’d like to participate in the conversation all the same. I love that I can continuously reference Drew Doughty’s Norris trophy as the rare case of a man in his 20’s receiving a career achievement award. It does bother me when “mistakes” happen because these awards do impact players’ legacies. They impact their salaries, sometimes directly because of bonuses that are linked to awards voting.

I suspect that’s the hardest part for some writers. No one wants to directly impact someone’s wallet. Maybe that’s a minor subject for the next CBA. But even if you removed those direct bonuses there’s no denying the impact that this voting has on legacy. Hell, even the day-to-day coverage of players has a major impact on perception. Who and how writers choose to write about influences conversation. The hope is that those tasked with doing so have the correct guiding morals and ethics to do so.

Awards voting IS important, but it also must be flawed, and fun to be the most entertaining and engaging, which is ultimately the core business of the NHL. What a tap dance that is. The result is that every voter or critic should have some guiding principles to direct their votes. I’ll outline mine as we go!

Hart Trophy

Here’s my gripe with the Hart. If we go by the direct definition of the Hart then we should go with the player deemed to be the “most valuable” to his team, which leads us directly down the path of WAR or Goals Above Replacement (GAR) or Game Score Value Added (GSVA).

We aren’t looking for any showstoppers just yet!

I also feel like the value narrative also leads you directly to the goalie who most out-performs their circumstances dragging a bad team to the playoffs or a mediocre team to genuine contention.
Maybe that should be how we vote on this award. Goal prevention is literally half of the game, and no player can impact that half more than the goaltender. Like the old saying goes, “goaltending is 50% of the game until you don’t have it, then it’s 100%.”

But just handing it to the best goalie, or rather the goaltender who most outperforms his circumstances, just doesn’t have the nuance I crave in this conversation.

This season’s example, Connor Hellebuyck, is a fine option. He absolutely carried a Jets’ team that lost two-thirds of their defense from the previous season (and showed it). He has a real narrative claim to the award. I swore off Hellebuyck in fantasy this season because of how devastated that blue line was. The Jets played exactly as poor defensively as you’d expect, but because of Hellebuyck they were looking like a playoff team and may well get there if they can win their play-in matchup against the Flames.

I just don’t think we should be handing it to Hellebuyck automatically and talking about the strict definition of value leads you to the goaltender nine times out of 10. I prefer the notion of “most outstanding”. There is an award for that, the Ted Lindsay award, but that’s one voted on by the players and doesn’t come with the same cache as the Hart Trophy. The reason the Lindsay is important is to highlight the times when Hart voting goes awry, like Corey Perry’s Hart win in 2011 (Daniel Sedin won the Lindsay), but it also acts as a great confirmation for when voting goes right like Connor McDavid’s 2017 Hart/Lindsay sweep.

I should note that the notion of “most outstanding” opens the door for non-serious contenders. Players who have ridiculous performances on bad teams, like Connor McDavid in 2018. He was the NHL’s best player, but not the MVP so we do have to leave some semblance of value and team performance included. Like I said, this is a delicate dance.

At this point, I feel like the best way to explain my methodology further is to unveil my ballot, so here we go!

#1 – Nathan MacKinnon – C – Colorado Avalanche

MacKinnon has an excellent resume. He finished 5th in scoring (93 points), 4th in primary points (72), 8th in 5-on-5 P/60 (2.90) and tied for 2nd in GSVA with Panarin. He was also hands-down the best player on the league’s third best team by points-percentage, and it was a team ravaged by injuries having lost the fifth most Cap Hit of Injured Players in the league.

In 2018-19, MacKinnon skated over 58% of his shifts flanked by the outstanding Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog. This season, he was with that combo for just 32% of his shifts and yet was having the best season of his career, on pace for 111 points.

MacKinnon helped to carry the Avalanche to legitimate contender status, ranking as one of this year’s eight teams with the scoring profile of a Stanley Cup contender:



MacKinnon checks all the boxes for me. He carried a significant load for not just a playoff team, but a contender, was the best player on his team, is in the “most outstanding” conversation and is one of the league’s best players at the peak of his powers.

#2 – Connor Hellebuyck – G – Winnipeg Jets

On the pod with Cliffy I got talked into moving Hellebuyck up to third and in going through this process I’ve eventually moved Hellebuyck up to second. And perhaps that says more about my reticence to have #4 and #5 on my list any higher, but Hellebuyck is a deserving candidate though in my mind not “outstanding” enough to win it all.

Hellebuyck finished narrowly behind Tuukka Rask in both HockeyReference’s and NaturalStatTrick’s Goals Saved Above Average, finished second in Wins (31) and first in shutouts (6). Normally, I wouldn’t reference shutouts, because it’s more of a team stat, but to shut anyone out with this defense is bloody miracle:


Hellebuyck is far and away my Vezina winner (I’ll get to my issues with that trophy later) and as we discussed above, he dragged a Jets team that lost a ton of talent and was primed for a step backwards to remain relevant.

#3 Artemi Panarin – W – New York Rangers

If Hellebuyck carries the “most valuable” narrative the best, Panarin does it the best as a skater. What he did with the Rangers this season was insane. “Dragged Dogshit Team to Relevance” would be the most apt headline. But of course, said dogshit team may actually only be relevant because of the pandemic induced 24-Team Play-in format that the NHL is running with.

Counterpoint, once the Rangers got Mika Zibanejad back, they took off, grading out as a top-10 team in the second half. A team that no one, most notably the Carolina Hurricanes, do not want to face in a playoff series.

Panarin also fits the “most outstanding” narrative finishing tied for third in points (95), tied for fifth in primary points (67), second in 5-on-5 P/60 (3.28), and tied for second in GSVA.

I’ve been struggling with the reality that in a normal year the Rangers aren’t a playoff team. But then again, maybe in a normal year they continue to ride that second-half play into a playoff berth. They were only two points back of Carolina/Toronto/Columbus (in a three-way tie for the two wildcard slots with 81 points) and had 12 games left to play. They had a number of teams to jump and ultimately low odds to get there, but they also had a better goal differential than anyone in the Conference below Carolina in the standings at plus-12.

The Avalanche, Jets and Rangers are all deep lottery teams without their MVP candidates but only one of them has the look of a legitimate contender. That’s ultimately why I lean MacKinnon over the other two.

#4 – David Pastrnak – W – Boston Bruins

One of the safest places to start the Hart trophy conversation is with the best player off the best team. This year that’s Pastrnak. He finished the season splitting the Rocket Richard trophy with Alex Ovechkin (aka the greatest goal scorer of all-time), tied for third in points with Artemi Panarin (95), second in primary points (79), seventh in 5-on-5 P/60 (2.92) and fourth in GSVA.

Pastrnak checks all the boxes you’d like in terms of the “most outstanding” conversation. The issue with him comes from trying to unknot his individual value from that of his similarly outstanding linemates; Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron. It’s near impossible to win out in the “most valuable” conversation when you play with other awesome players in terms of strict definition, so I try not to hold elite linemates against a guy. If the three best players in the league all played on one line, I’d try to not have them “split the vote”.

But ultimately, Pastrnak does lose out. His season was as outstanding as MacKinnon’s and Panarin’s but he did so as one great piece on a team loaded with them, and he didn’t so separate himself from his teammates or his peers to overcome those circumstances. His season was not a 2019 Nikita Kucherov performance where the force multiplier of playing on the league’s best team with elite linemates led to the hands-down the single-most impressive performance of the season.

MacKinnon simply had to do more with less than Pastrnak. Also, the Bruins would still have been a great team without Pastrnak, perhaps not the President’s trophy winners, but they’d have remained in the mix.

#5 – Leon Draisaitl – C/W – Edmonton Oilers

Most outstanding player, sure. Draisaitl led the NHL with 110 points (13 clear of second place teammate Connor McDavid), was tops in primary points (82), ninth in 5-on-5 P/60 (2.89), and eighth in GSVA.

Draisaitl also has a decent MVP narrative, carrying the Oilers while Connor McDavid missed seven games and leading the league in ice time among forwards skating an obscene 22:37 per game. I don’t think I have enough appendages to count the number of times Draisaitl skated over 25 minutes in a game, frequently playing four out of the five overtime minutes, tirelessly dragging the Oilers to an extra point or two that they desperately needed.

I keep running into two issues with Draisaitl:

1. He’s not even the best player on his own team. As outstanding as Draisaitl is, I have a tough time shaking the sense that he is Scottie to McDavid’s Michael. Evgeni Malkin eventually broke loose of that similar narrative in Pittsburgh, but it took Sidney Crosby losing his prime years to injury. let’s hope that if Draisaitl is to do the same, we don’t have to see McDavid shelved. Keep in mind, it almost happened.

2. Draisaitl’s Houdini act in December (11 of his 14 points came on the PP and he was a ghastly minus-24 in 14 games) that had the Oilers spiralling and left you with the sense that this would be yet another #HereComeTheOilers season. Draisaitl didn’t escape his funk until Kailer Yamamoto’s arrival from the AHL, forming one of the league’s most dominant trios along with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

Maybe it’s a sign of Draisaitl’s greatness that we can decry a month where he scored a point-per-game! And maybe we shouldn’t hold it against him that the Oilers couldn’t find the right options to fit around him. After all, it took the Penguins years to figure out that Crosby works best with the scrappy Chris Kunitz types.

Still, I can’t help but feel like Draisaitl is less of a force multiplier than the other forwards above. He will probably win this trophy. He belongs in the conversation. I just prefer a few other options.

Vezina Trophy

We touched on it above, so we may as well dive into the Vezina Trophy next. It’s a unique award in this discussion because it is NOT voted on by the PHWA but instead it is voted on by the NHL GM’s. Seeing how these GM’s manage their own goaltending situations, I’m not sure they deserve the privilege, but I digress!

My bigger issue with the Vezina is that it so rarely is captured by the league’s best goaltender. Roberto Luongo never won the Vezina. Henrik Lundqvist only won it one time. These awards are a big deal for a player’s legacy, especially seeing as neither Luongo nor Lundqvist were able to cap their careers with a Cup (though maybe Lundqvist can get there), coming oh so close one time each. They are sure fire Hall-of-Famers so maybe they don’t the hardware on their resumes, but it sure would help!

I just find goaltending is so volatile that in any given year you’ll have that one outstanding performance that jumps out above the fray but doesn’t really capture who we all believe to be the best at the position. It’s why I proposed to Cliffy on the pod that we create a Goaltender Championship Belt that the best goalie on earth carries around wherever they go until they officially lose the title. It could help us a lot. We could still celebrate the Vezina for best goalie performance of a single season, while still knowing who the true king is. It would act similarly to the Ted Lindsay, with the caveat that we absolutely cannot allow the players to vote for it.

The Goalie Championship Belt is another story for another day. Here’s my Vezina ballot:

#1 Connor Hellebuyck – Winnipeg Jets

If you’re good enough to break into the Hart discussion, you are certainly good enough for the Vezina.

#2 Tuukka Rask – Boston Bruins

Number-one goalie on the best team, like Pastrnak for the Hart, this is a good place to start. That Rask is actually slightly ahead of Hellebuyck in GSAA despite playing in such a well-insulated environment speaks volumes to his play.

Rask only played in 41 of a possible 70 games, which is way too near to 50% for my liking. There’s probably going to become a time when EVERY goalie is starting in this range (which will likely kill the goalies for Hart thing, BTW) but until that time games played still matters. Is he as efficient starting 75% of the time?

#3 Ben Bishop – Dallas Stars

Finding goalies who both played a significant number of their team’s games and remained efficient doing so was a struggle. Seriously, the demands of this position are so high. Goalies get better every year, but they’ve been losing the battle against skaters for the past few. One of the few to excel during these times: Bishop.

I feel bad that he’s been a bridesmaid for this one so often, but I also don’t feel like he has ever held the Goalie Championship Belt, so I don’t feel too bad.

#4 Andrei Vasilevskiy – Tampa Bay Lightning

Not nearly as strong a season from the incumbent this go around. If it weren’t for his volume of games played, he may not have even cracked my ballot. But he played enough to get there despite inconsistency and signs of wear.

I’d be concerned as a fantasy owner, as Vasilevskiy is coming off the best three-year run of any goalie in the league and goalies simply do not sustain that type of play beyond those 2-3 -year runs. He’s only 25 but has put on a ton of miles these past few seasons and has already complained of fatigue at times in his career. He is also about to start a new mega contract making him the third highest paid goalie in the league. And that contract, combined with a flat or declining cap is going to force the Lightning to shed talent so the environment around him could become more demanding, but I digress.

#5 Jacob Markstrom – Vancouver Canucks

Honestly, Markstrom is probably a better MVP candidate than he is a Vezina candidate, but he was a good goalie, making a positive influence for an imperfect Canucks team right on the cusp of the playoffs. He finished 11th in NaturalStatTrick’s GSAA, right behind Vasilevskiy and a bunch of backups, but played just enough to snag consideration for me here.

Markstrom played only 43 games because he missed time due to injury, which is where we get into his MVP candidacy. The Canucks STRUGGLED when Markstrom went down, falling slightly out of the playoff picture heading into the lockdown. With a healthy Markstrom, they probably breeze into the playoffs. That’s probably more of an indictment of Thatcher Demko than it is a celebration of Markstrom. Markstrom was good and that’s all this Canucks team needed to be playoff worthy. Other guys here were great so Markstrom is a distant fifth.

And to be clear, no I am not arguing that Markstrom was the Canucks' best player. You could pick a handful of either guys for that distinction, but why crap on a guy when celebrating his strong season?

Norris Trophy

For this one, I’m giving my ballot in reverse order because I feel like the conversation has to start with…

#5 John Carlson – Washington Capitals

Carlson’s Norris Trophy win feels as inevitable as gravity, but I am doing my best to resist the pull. It irks me to no end that Carlson is going to win this thing for becoming the sort of one-way rover/defensive liability that guys like Mike Green and Erik Karlsson were forever bashed for being but that Karlsson never actually even was.

And look, Carlson IS deserving as a candidate. He leads all defensemen in scoring by a full 10 points, sitting well above a point-per-game. It’s just that points are a horrible measure of what a defenseman is doing, is especially in the context of the Norris, which is supposed to reward the defenseman who demonstrates the best “all-around” ability. Going all-in on offense to the detriment of defense is not being the best all-around. Carlson going all-in on offense remains a positive force, and it may even be the best way of maximizing Carlson’s talents, it just doesn’t make him the best overall force, because there are others who can do it nearly as well as Carlson offensively, while giving way less back the other way.

What’s telling for me is that Carlson can be 10 points clear of the next defenseman and still be well below guys like Roman Josi, Victor Hedman, and Alex Pietrangelo in GSVA. He sits 10th in that metric but he’s a full 50% behind those guys in actual output in that stat, putting him closer to middle-of-the-road than elite.

I’ve made this point on a few pods, but probably most explicitly on the 2008 NHL Re-Draft with Elan Dubrofsky: how many points would Carlson’s contemporaries score if in a similarly peachy situation? And perhaps more importantly, how much better would the Capitals be defensively were that the case?

#4 Dougie Hamilton – Carolina Hurricanes

Hamilton was running away with this thing at mid-season but then an injury cut his season short. Good news for him, in a pandemic-shortened season 47 games is closer to 70% of the schedule than the 55% it would normally amount to. Is that enough to have him win? No. But it is enough to get him on my ballot.

#3 Victor Hedman – Tampa Bay Lightning

You barely hear Hedman’s name mentioned in the Norris discussion despite the fact that if there was a defenseman championship belt, Hedman undoubtedly snatched that thing away from Erik Karlsson after Karlsson’s Herculian feat of dragging the 2017 Senators to within a goal of the Cup final while on one leg left him permanently hobbled.

Hedman won the Norris in 2018 so our propensity to champion the shiny new thing likely has him on the backburner, but he remains one of the league’s premiere defensemen in the prime of his career. This wasn’t his best season, and he wasn’t the best this season, but it was still elite.

#2 Alex Pietrangelo – St Louis Blues

No Cup hangover for the Blues, which is a testament to the tour-de-force that was Pietrangelo’s play this season, dominating in all phases and keeping the Blues atop the standings despite losing elite goal-scorer Vladimir Tarasenko.

Pietrangelo’s been in the mix for this thing a bunch of times. He’s kind of the other guy from that vaunted ’08 draft class so loaded with defenders like Doughty, Karlsson and Carlson (and also Roman Josi!) so I wouldn’t be shocked to see Pietrangelo gain a ton of traction not only for his performance but also as the next guy “due” for his win. I can’t push him that far because I don’t believe in that sort of thing but also because there is another guy who is also due and had such a significantly better season.

#1 Roman Josi – Nashville Predators

The Predators lost PK Subban to trade, Ryan Ellis to injury and their head coach to poor play, and their identity to god knows what, and through it all was Josi dragging them to relevance.

I mentioned it with Carlson, defenseman scoring is generally a poor measure of overall play, but Josi finishing second in defenseman scoring (65 points in 68 games) just 10 behind Carlson, while leading his team in scoring (Filip Forsberg was second with 48 points in 63 games) by a whopping 17 points should tell you something.

Once you factor in team quality, Josi accounted for the same percentage of team offense as Carlson and did it without giving as much back defensively. Plus/Minus is flawed but Josi being a Plus-22 on a team with a negative goal-differential stands out.

Where would the Caps be without Carlson? Probably still darn good. The Preds would be deep in the lottery without Josi driving the bus. Maybe that’s more a case for him being a strong MVP candidate, but guess what? He’s also one of those! Josi finished top-10 in GSVA, the only defenseman with that distinction in the past three seasons.

I feel so strongly that Josi was the best defenseman that if I had an actual ballot I’d consider filling out the rest of my ballot with fake candidates so as to not prop anyone else up that could steer things away from Josi. He was so far and away the best defenseman that it pains me he won’t win.

Calder Trophy

This thing matters only because of player bonuses and leverage in future negotiations. Otherwise, it’s a meaningless trophy. The Calder race is a snapshot in time and just happens to be a time when players are arguably the worst they will ever be in their NHL careers. It doesn’t matter that Connor McDavid lost the Calder to Artemi Panarin. No one cares that Zdeno Chara was a hunk of playdough for the first few years of his career. Barret Jackman once one the Calder over Henrik Zetterberg.

It can be fun to debate but the more I think about it the less I care. Doing all the re-draft pods that I’ve done, and considering how little emphasis I put on the Calder for defining a player, I just can’t work up the gumption to argue. Also, the top two for this year are so damned close that arguing just doesn’t seem worth it.

Quinn Hughes or Cale Makar? Cale Makar or Quinn Hughes? Rig the vote so they split it. The conversation doesn’t really begin until…

#3 Adam Fox – New York Rangers

Fox benefits from having done three seasons of college before making the leap at 21, but that only matters in how you project him going forward vs. Makar and Hughes. For his Calder candidacy, Fox stands out in a season loaded with exceptional rookie defensemen to the point that Ethan Bear and John Marino won’t even make my ballot.

Fox has all the makings of a #1 defenseman, which, remember when the Flames traded Dougie Hamilton AND Adam Fox (not to mention Micheal Ferland) to the Hurricanes in the same deal? That’s insane, and it hasn’t even worked out that horribly for Calgary, but also, man could they use Hamilton and Fox!

Carolina, only got a 2nd and a conditional 3rd for shuffling Fox along to his preferred destination (PLAYER EMPOWERMENT) so the ultimate winner here is the Rangers, who appear setup for contention very soon with cornerstones at forward (Panarin), goalie (Igor Shesterkin) and defense (Fox), not to mention a loaded pipeline. They committed to the rebuild two years ago and almost immediately turned it around, and I don’t think we’d be nearly as optimistic without Fox helping to drive play from the back end.

#4 Dominik Kubalik – F – Chicago Blackhawks

The 2013 7th round selection of the LA Kings, Kubalik similarly wielded his player power last summer getting the Kings to trade his rights to Chicago for a 5th round pick. I think the league’s second lowest scoring team would rather have kept the 30-goal man!

#5 Elvis Merzlikins – G – Columbus Blue Jackets

The league’s most impressive rookie is in hot pursuit of Andrei Vasilevskiy for the title of league’s most entertaining goalie. He is also exceptional at stopping pucks, which helps! You could argue that MacKenzie Blackwood (somehow still Calder eligible) had a more important impact helping to buoy a moribund Devils team, but Merzlikins showed out as eighth in NaturalStatTrick’s GSAA and might have cracked the Vezina ballot with more games and a better start to his NHL career.

Selke Trophy

Here’s the thing about the Selke, it is such a narrative and reputation award that I almost don’t even want to think about it. The trophy is literally supposed to go to the “best defensive forward” but you somehow don’t qualify for the conversation unless you are pretty good offensively. And because it is so narrative and reputation driven it seems like we are always 2-3 years behind on this thing. With that in mind, here’s my ballot:

#1 Sean Couturier – Philadelphia Flyers

If we’re always 2-3 years behind, let’s give it to the guy who should’ve won it 2-3 years ago even though this wasn’t close to his best season.

#2 Anthony Cirelli – Tampa Bay Lightning

Here’s the guy who probably should win it. He has had a tremendous defensive impact while flashing enough offense to clear the imaginary threshold, but I suspect he won’t win for a couple more years.

#3 Phillip Danault – Montreal Canadiens

Danault doesn’t have the offense to be a #1 centerman but in Montreal he makes do pairing with Tomas Tatar and Brendan Gallagher to form one of the league’s premiere shot-volume lines. Seriously, these guys tilt the ice like no other, ranking 1-2-3 in Corsi-For Percentage all at above 59%.

#4 Mark Stone – Vegas Golden Knights

Again, we’re probably a couple of years behind on peak Stone here. On the other hand, a line with Chandler Stephenson on it was one of the best lines of the analytics era. Take a guess who the driver of that line is.

#5 Ryan O’Reilly – St Louis Blues

The incumbent gets some love once again.

Jack Adams

This one is interesting because there are only 31 coaches in the league, which is miniscule relative to each player position group so you aren’t working with a large population to pluck exceptional performances out of, especially when most every coach in the league is somewhere on the “good curve”. It’s easy to see that Nathan MacKinnon or Artemi Panarin are better than most players. Is it easy to tell coaching talent apart when most of what they do happens behind closed doors?

The easiest way to figure things out is to whittle things down.

First, the lottery-bound coaches are out. Sorry, but if you can’t make a 24-team playoff you weren’t coach of the year.

I’m not really impressed if you snuck into the 24-team playoff either so Montreal, Chicago and Arizona’s coaches are out.

All the mid-season coaching changes are out too. Did any one new coaching hire jump out to you as a significant improvement?

Florida spent $10M on a goalie and remain a defensive tire fire, sorry, but Coach Q is out.

The Islanders got worse this season, so our incumbent, Barry Trotz, is out.

If your MVP is your goalie, you’re out, sorry to Travis Green and Paul Maurice.

I’m not impressed by Todd Reirden leading the league’s least injured team to a narrow division title, so he’s out.

I’ve got roughly 10 names left to try and pick out the best narrative, which is hugely important for this award. Usually the narrative of choice is the big turnaround. This season I think it comes down to overcoming staggering odds and on that front no one did it better than…

#1 John Tortorella – Columbus Blue Jackets

The Blue Jackets lost their best forward to a division rival, their franchise goalie and their hired-gun #1 centerman in free agency, nearly $30M in AAV and barely missed a beat. But that barely scratches the surface of the job Tortorella did. Not only did they lose all that talent, but they also suffered injuries, significant injuries. By Cap Hit of Injured Players only Pittsburgh dealt with more substantial injuries.

Seth Jones, Cam Atkinson, Josh Anderson, Markus Nutivaara, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Alexandre Texier, Ryan Murray, Joonas Korpisalo and Alexander Wennberg all missed double-digit games and yet the Blue Jackets held it together not only as a Wild Card contender but as one of the stingiest outfits in the NHL. Getting so many fill-in players to understand and execute a system that successfully is a testament to his coaching talents.

#2 Mike Sullivan – Pittsburgh Penguins

Here’s the list of players to play 60+ games for the Penguins: Teddy Blueger, Marcus Pettersson, Brandon Tanev, Jack Johnson, Jared McCann, Dominik Simon and miraculously Kris Letang. Not only did they lead the league in CHIP but managed to integrate multiple rookies as well as a never-ending stream of players you’d swear were the made up names you start coming across in Year 3 or 4 of NHL Be a GM mode - I’m looking at you, Anthony Angello!

Also, their incumbent #1 goalie took an absolute dump and yet here they are sniffing around as a Cup contender. If not for Tortorella this would be the most impressive coaching job in the league.

#3 Jared Bednar – Colorado Avalanche

Bednar didn’t suffer quite the same litany of injuries as the above two but dealt with enough significant injuries that he warrants a shoutout. Having the MVP on his team doesn’t help his cause.

#4 Dave Tippett – Edmonton Oilers

Now we’re into the weeds. I like the turnaround from the Oilers here, integrating multiple rookies into their lineup, becoming stout defensively (particularly on the penalty kill where they went from rags to riches) and helping to prop up a paper tiger of a goalie tandem.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that playing the crap out of McDavid and Draisaitl would help matters, but Tippett figured out how to stretch that strategy to its maximum and has a playoff team on his hands as a result. Considering how many coaches have failed with these same toys, Tippett gets a ton of credit.

#5 Bruce Cassidy – Boston Bruins

Again, starting with the league’s best team is always a good place. To go from heartbreak in the Cup final to suffer no hang over and come out as far and away the President’s Trophy winners is quite the feat.

You could sell me on a half-dozen other coaches here, but these are the narratives I’ve settled on.

*

That, if you stuck with me, is my awards ballot for 2020!

Tune in next time for my 2020 year-end All-Star teams.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Can We Expect in a Pierre-Luc Dubois Trade?

Image
  What in the hell might a Pierre-Luc Dubois trade look like? Well, good news, we have some history of similar type trades. Young, high lottery pick players getting tired of one location have frequently moved teams. First, let’s talk about that contract. He signed a two-year extension with the Blue Jackets before the season began, with hopes it might help facilitate a trade. His $5M average annual value comes in at a reasonable level for a player of his talents. Consider that from the 2016 draft class a handful of top-10 picks are now on their second contracts and only Jesse Puljujarvi (after a case of gross mismanagement) has signed for a significantly lower AAV. Auston Matthews got a mega deal. Patrik Laine (playing out a similar story in Winnipeg) signed a pricier bridge deal. Clayton Keller signed on for the full eight-year bag with Arizona and has a $7M AAV as a result. Dubois’ eight-year deal is coming in North of that Keller number you can rest assured. And his next de...
Read more

2021 NHL Season Bets

  I am so excited to see what the 2021 NHL season has in store for us. Over the past few weeks, I’ve put out a bunch of takes and bets on the podcast in an effort to preview the season ahead. For my own sake, and yours, I am compiling all of my takes and bets into one place so that we can reflect on what went right or wrong. Maybe we’ll learn something, or at least there will be accountability, something we don’t have nearly enough of in this world. First off, all of my player Over/Under prop bets and leans can be found over on DobberHockey. I ended up locking in 11 bets. All of my other bets and leans can be found here. On my awards betting preview podcast with Cam Robinson , we perused the best bets for the Art Ross, Rocket Richard, Hart and Norris trophies. My Player Award Picks Art Ross Pick: Connor McDavid McDavid topped my projections for the season ahead with 76 points in 52 games. He is also the betting favourite at odds as low as 3/1 to win the scoring race. ...
Read more