Ah, yes, it’s that time of year again. It’s time for my mock NHL awards. This tradition started several years ago and was originally based off of the mock awards that were voted on in high school. Over the years, they’ve evolved quite a bit and fake trophies come and go every season. The real NHL awards show doesn't take place until tomorrow night, but it's never too early to get into the spirit.
The Dr. Rahmani Award (comes with a free lasik procedure) goes to Dennis LaRue. When I saw the Brad May no-goal on TV, I really thought I’d seen the most obnoxiously bad call ever. Of course, then Jim Joyce came along and had to one-up him right in front of my eyes, but since these are NHL fake awards, it goes to LaRue.
The Hatfield-McCoy Enemies Award goes to Wings fans and referees. No season in recent memory has been plagued by more obnoxiously bad calls. Call us tin foil hat wearers all you want, but there were a boatload of legitimate complaints this season. The bad officiating was rampant throughout the league, but plays like the May goal, the shootout winner against Dallas, and the better part of the San Jose series only served to reinforce the notion.
The Golden Pretzel Award for Epic Choking goes to the Boston Bruins. They had a 3-game series lead and a 3-goal lead in Game Seven and still managed to lose. Seriously?
The Class Couple Award goes to Gary Bettman and Sidney Crosby. Previous winners include Gary Bettman and Sidney Crosby. In fact, it should really be re-named after them, what with all of the discussion of renaming the real NHL awards to honor more modern players. It's fairly obvious why the commish and his Little Buddy won, so I won't go into depth. (Yes, I did just copy/paste this from last year’s awards post.)
The List Award (as in, "You're on my list.") is awarded to Shane Doan. I honestly never had an issue with Doan until the Wings faced Phoenix in the first round. He very quickly made his way onto my list where he shall remain forever.
The Chosen Ones Award goes to the Chicago Blackhawks. Their Cup victory was everything the NHL could’ve dreamed of. They got there thanks to young stars they obtained by tanking for a long time and using high draft picks to make no-brainer selections. They’re a huge media market, and their stars are young, North American, and marketable. If it couldn’t be Pittsburgh…
The first annual Eavesed Award goes to (shockingly) Patrick Eaves for his hilarious contribution to the H2H festivities. We’ll be laughing about that one for years to come. (Stick tap to Jenn for this one.)
The Mr. Invisible Award goes to Jason Williams (Who?). I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I follow hockey pretty closely. Despite the amount of time I spend obsessing over the Wings, I always managed to find a way to forget about Williams. I know I wasn’t alone. Even when he was getting ready to come back from injury, the reporters included his progress as an afterthought several days later. Poor Willy. (Stick tap to Amanda for this one.)
The Goalie in A Past Life Award goes to Brad Stuart. How many goal line saves did he make this season? It seemed like every couple of games, he was knocking a puck out of the crease after it had gotten by the goalie.
The Master Thespian Award goes to the entire San Jose Sharks lineup for managing to make even professional soccer players shake their heads in disgust at their flopping. (Stick tap to Rob for this one.)
The Face Only A Mother Could Love Award goes to Shane Doan. His goal celebration in the first round inspired the awesome #Doanface photoshops. This could just as easily have gone to Crosby's Olympic celebration, but since that one wasn't actually from the NHL, Doan won out.
The Team MVP Award goes to Pavel Datsyuk for accumulating the most Cookies and Cupcakes throughout the season. He finished in first place with 11 sets of baked goods. Jimmy Howard finished just behind him with 10 awards. Hank and Homer tied for third with six each. Everyone who spent significant time on the roster managed to snag the goodies at least once except for Abdelkader, Draper, Maltby, May, Williams, Ericsson, Kronwall, Lebda, Lilja, and Meech.
The Team Scapegoat Award (maybe not an award, actually…) goes to Todd Bertuzzi. He managed to rack up eleven Golden Facepalms throughout the season. Big Rig was a distant second with six of them. Rafalski came in third with 5 Facepalms. The only major players to not get a Facepalm at least once were Draper, Franzen, Maltby, and May.
Thoughts for other awards or nominees?
I don't remember if you did the cookies and cupcakes during the playoffs, but Ericsson had one game where he played like 29 minutes and was dominant. I think it was the game against Phx when Stuey got hurt. He should've got the goodies that night
ReplyDeleteI only looked at the regular season for these. I switched things up a little for the playoffs so there were no baked goods handed out then.
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