Creating 5 Fun NHL Awards New Jersey Devils Could Actually Win This Season

Pavel Bure Goal of the Year Award

One thing the NHL loves doing more than anything is naming awards after old hockey people. The Hart Trophy is named after Dr. David Hart, who donated the trophy because his son was the coach for the Montreal Canadiens. The Calder Trophy is named after former NHL President Frank Calder. He donated the first few versions of the rookie of the year trophy before his untimely death. Even the Stanley Cup is named after Lord Stanley, who gave hockey the first Stanley Cup. This Cup was around 7 inches tall.

Maybe it’s time to start naming more awards after players other than 100 year old “builders” of the league. We already have the “Rocket” Richard Award, but this gives one of the most dynamic players in the history of the game more recognition. Everyone knows about Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier. It’s curious how many people remember how good Pavel Bure was at his peak.

This award is pretty self explanatory. It awards the player who scores the best goal of the season. It’s that goal that immediately goes viral. They happen like five or six times per season. There’s always one really early in the season, and this year it was Trevor Zegras’ pass over the net to Sonny Milano in a game against the Sabres.

It started a firestorm of debate after John Tortorella complained about it, which makes us want him to win an award for it even more. Zegras and Milano could share the award since Milano technically scored, but the award lives on nonetheless.

The Brodeur Award

Listen, it’s a New Jersey Devils blog. We are going to fight for Martin Brodeur tooth and nail as the best goalie in the history of the game. Others might want to call this the “Hasek” Award, and that’s fine, but when we think of ridiculous saves, we think of Martin Brodeur. He had the back kick against the Rangers, the toe save on Mario Lemieux, and the many, many sprawling saves to keep Devils opponents off the board.

So, after Brodeur put up some of the greatest single saves in the history of the game, he gets to be the Save of the Year namesake. Last season, Mackenzie Blackwood would have been right in the conversation for Save of the Year after this beauty helped save the game against the Boston Bruins. This season, Thatcher Demko has had a few save of the year candidates, but this one is the best so far against Jamie Benn of the Dallas Stars.

We forget a lot of the great goals and saves throughout the year, so this would be a wonderful reminder of the bests parts of our game. The best way to grow the game is to show fans some of the best plays of the game. We wait for 60 minutes a night every two days just to see one or two of these plays every season. They are that good, and they should be immortalized better.

Sergei Fedorov Special Teams Stud Award

Sergei Fedorov is one of the best penalty killers in the history of this sport. In 18 seasons, he had 36 shorthanded goals. He was not ever going to stop looking to score, and he was really good at keeping the other team off the board as well. He also had 144 power-play goals and 400 power-play points over his career. Fedorov was great no matter what the situation called for. This is another great player that isn’t quite correctly represented for his effect on the game. Maybe it would make more sense to make this the “Bobby Clarke” Special Teams Stud Award in order to represent a different time period than Pavel Bure, but it’s hard to beat the 90s hockey out of me.

This would represent the player in the NHL who is great at both the power play and the penalty kill. We’re not looking for the guy who scored the most power-play goals or the player who spends the most time on the man disadvantage. We want the player who excels at both aspects of the game.

There is a small chance that this could end up being another Selke Trophy. This award could actually give the Selke Trophy a reset to go back to its roots. We don’t have to worry about giving the defensive forward with the most points the Selke. We can truly give it to the best defensive forward.

This is something that could be debated more than the Selke, as we have to argue what we assess as better. If someone has 30 power-play points but is average on the penalty kill, is he better than guy who is elite at killing penalties but plays on his team’s second power-play unit? That’s the fun of this award.

Paul Coffey Offensive Defenseman of the Year

This is where the Devils are in their wheelhouse. P.K. Subban, Ty Smith, Damon Severson, and Dougie Hamilton are all considered offensive defensemen first and foremost. Hamilton would even have a legit shot at this award. Paul Coffey is likely the most obvious player on this list. He’s the best offensive defenseman of all time. We don’t need to talk about his defensive qualities, but that’s not what we’re focusing on here.

This season, again Hamilton would be up there in the voting, but Cale Makar would be the winner of this award. He might sweep the defensive awards this season. He’s been so good. Sometimes that will happen. The best offensive defenseman can be the best defenseman, but like someone could theoretically win the Selke Trophy and the Hart Trophy.

We celebrate forwards who can play defense (sort of), but we should also celebrate defensemen who play like scorers. Being able to light the lamp from the blue line is a very important skill in the game today. Imagine how nice it would be for Scott Niedermayer to know he has a shot at this award every year? There are great offensive defensemen every season, and the different ways points are scored would avoid just giving it to the defender with the most points. If one defender has 10 goals and 40 assists, does he get it over the defenseman with 65 points if that player only had 6 goals? It would be a fun debate.

NHL’s Analytical Darling

This one is hard to put a name on since analytics are generally a new thing when it comes to hockey coverage in the mainstream. Name a really underrated player who was still worthy of having an award named after him. Anyway, this is the NHL’s way of accepting the analytics community. The issue here is the voters. We couldn’t have the traditional voters go after this award because they would just pick the MVP. We need some of the greats of the analytics community.

Give this award to Josh and Luke Younggren of Evolving Wild. Let JFresh and Rachel Doerrie have a vote on this award. We need to have one of the originals in Micah McCurdy voting on this award. Get some of the best in terms of analytics together, and let them all have a vote. There are dozens of analytics greats out there, and they should be the ones who vote on this award.

This does a few things for the NHL. One, it gets more people to learn about analytics. Two, it gets the analytics community together for one cause. Three, it gets more math minds wondering if they could predict the NHL, and it might get more great minds into the game similar to how Bill James’s book got more smart minds into baseball.

This one might be a hard sell, but it would be a lot of fun. We would say we could also give out the “eye test award” but that’s basically what the MVP award is.