-The Gordie Howe Award (most active on the board): /
Rob gets a nomination due to his activity/cleaning things up and updating spreadsheets, among his numerous comments.
Corey gets a nomination for his updates, power rankings, and comments. Those power rankings though.... Where does he come up with some of the content? Haha. Amazing.
-The Ken Holland Award (most outstanding GM): I have to give this to Rob. I'm not sure many of us gave his Bruins a chance at being in the top third of the league prior to the season, but somehow his GM skills enabled him to do just that.... And that was with him trading away Pastrnak to get Vessey!
(Haha! Although yeah he also got a ton of picks with Vess).-The Wayne Gretzky Award (team w/ best centers): This one is closer than people may think...
Having Seguin and Tavares. plus Bergeron's output this year, with all three in the top-14 for C rankings right now gives ANA the edge.
Philly was very close - Geno, Pavelski and Couture are a great trio as well including the 2nd and 4th ranked C's with Couture at 16th. But the drop-off from those 3 to the 4th/5th C is a lot more than ANA's, as ANA has Hertl and Pageau at over 2.2pts/game, versus Cousins and Shore, both under 1.6/game.
-The Brendan Shanahan Award (team w/ best left wings): There are three teams who qualify seriously for this one (DET, STL, VAN), but the rankings don't lie and that gives the award to DET.
STL and VAN had 4 guys in or close to the top-40, but DET has 4 guys in the top-33: Granlund, Panarin, Zetterberg, Voracek.
-The Jaromir Jagr Award (team w/ best right wings): It's close between VAN and STL.
I have to give myself the nomination here.
ONLY based on the fact that Hoffman recently got RW elig. (I didn't even notice until I was looking up rankings).
That gives me 2 of the top 4 (Kucherov, Pastrnak), 3 of the top-21 RW's (as of Mar.14 pre-games), and 4 of the top-50 adding Drouin.
Also having Gallagher as a 4th (who's been injured most of the season) isn't too bad...
(and don't forget about Di Giuseppe!)-The Bobby Orr Award (team w/ best defensemen): Carolina is all over this one. Sadly I must say. Only a couple years removed from having the best D core, and then Brent Burns shows up to play. And Spurgeon and Jones emerge.
But seriously, this isn't even close. The #1 D by a TON, and then oh, just 5 of the top-30 ranked D.
(Where did Jeff Petry come from? Hands up if you had Petry ranked ahead of Justin Faulk - Faulk with a "U" too!)-The Dominik Hasek Award (team w/ best goalies): So goalie depth is great and all, but we only start 2. And Buffalo has THE top-2 goalies in the league. Both have been healthy, and both have put up over 320 points. Only 3 goalies have done so this far. Really though...Buffalo only needed 2 goalies for those two roster spots this year. Chad Johnson had a nice stretch this year for Buffalo as well, although he's been relegated to nothingness once again.
Surprisingly enough, I would give 2nd place to EDM or COL over LA though. Andersen and Rinne at 4th and 10th, or Dubnyk and Budaj at 3rd and 13th is better than Price and Murray at 6th and 17th. Yes LA has Quick, but in terms of this season, he's only played 7 games (also why Budaj is ranked 13th overall).
-The Bad Juju Award (most unluckiest team): ?I never know who to put for this one. Maybe it's too early to tell.
What if VAN or STL get knocked out in this week's playoffs, does that count as unlucky, after being great all throughout the season?
I don't keep track of everyone else's rosters and injuries, but the award could go to a team who had a good team on paper prior to the season, but then got handed a lot of injures. (Thankfully that team wasn't me this year).