Individual Hockey Hardware

Now that the Blues have had time to let their Stanley Cup victory sink in and St. Louis radio stations have transitioned away from 24 hours of "Gloria!" (that song randomly came on the radio the day after the game and it was one of the most exciting moments of my life, and, yes, I do realize how sad that is), it's time to start thinking about the NHL Awards and Draft.  I've already got my Kaapo Kakko jersey on back order, so the Devils better take Jack Hughes with the No. 1 pick.  But that's not until Friday night.  First, we've got the NHL Awards.

The Stanley Cup is the best championship trophy, and the NHL carries that over into its individual awards.  Because they're all cool trophies with awesome names.  Yes, the NHL has a lot of individual awards.  But it's OK.  Because every one has a cool trophy associated with it.  And all of those trophies are really old with rich histories.

Hart: Nikita Kucherov, Lightning-Personally, I don't think there's much of a question who the NHL's MVP is.  Kucherov had 128 points, including a ridiculous 87 assists for a team that tied the NHL record for wins (unfortunately, they forgot to save some for the playoffs).  Tampa Bay was the best team in the league by a wide margin during the regular season, and Kucherov was their best player.  The Lightning went 54-5-3 when he had a point and 8-11-1 when he didn't.  Sounds like an MVP to me.

Vezina: Andrei Vasilevskiy, Lightning-Take everything I just said about Nikita Kucherov and apply it to Andrei Vasilevskiy.  He's a big reason why Tampa Bay set that wins record, earning 39 of the Lightning's 62 victories himself.  Yes, Bishop and Lehner both finished ahead of him in both GAA and save percentage.  Tampa Bay doesn't win that many games without Vasilevskiy, though.

Norris: Brent Burns, Sharks-Before I continue, shout out to my man Jeremiah McCallie, who works for the NHL and created all of these graphics.  Anyway, the only man whose beard is comparable to Jeremiah's is Brent Burns.  And, no, that isn't the reason why I think Burns should win his second Norris Trophy in three years.  It's because he had a point per game (as a defenseman!), including 67 freakin' assists!, and scored six game-winners.

Calder: Jordan Binnington, Blues-If the Stanley Cup Playoffs were included, Binnington (who nearly won the Conn Smythe) would be the runaway winner.  As it is, I think it'll be a close vote between him and Pettersson.  I do think Binnington will win it, though.  The Blues' turnaround from last place in the league to Stanley Cup champions started when they put him in net.  He went 24-5-1 with a 1.89 GAA after his debut.  If he'd play a whole season with those kind of numbers, we'd be talking about the Vezina.

Selke: Patrice Bergeron, Bruins-They might as well just rename this award the "Patrice Bergeron Trophy."  He's won it four times and is a finalist for the eighth straight year.  He had four short-handed goals and a +23 rating.  In other words, Bergeron did what he normally does.  Which, quite simply, is play the best defense among forwards in the NHL.

Lady Byng: Aleksander Barkov, Panthers-As great as it would be to see Ryan O'Reilly win a season-long award to go along with the Conn Smythe, how can the Lady Byng go to anybody but Barkov?  He set a team record for points (96) and had 100 takeaways, but neither of those is the most ridiculous stat associated with Barkov's 2018-19 season.  He played every game and was assessed just four penalties.  That's insane!

Masterson: Joe Thornton, Sharks-Not surprisingly, this is a tough one.  Because all three finalists have great stories that would make them a worthy winner.  Thornton's comeback season is simply too much to ignore, however.  He blew out his left knee in 2017, then blew out his right knee in 2018.  But he came back in 2019, as a 39-year-old, played 73 games and contributed to a good Sharks team.

King Clancy: Henrik Lundqvist, Rangers-Remember the episode of How I Met Your Mother where Robin brags about having done the "Old King Clancy" and no one knows what she's talking about?  That has nothing to do with anything.  It's just the first thing I thought of when I got to this award.  In reality, this is the closest thing the NHL has to the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year.  Which means we have three worthy finalists.  I can't believe Hank hasn't won it yet.  His foundation has raised more than $2.5 million for children's health charities since its creation.

Messier: Wayne Simmonds, Predators-I almost wrote "Wayne Simmonds, Flyers."  Still not used to him in Nashville.  Anyway, the NHL's leadership award is 100 percent Mark Messier.  He picked the finalists and he'll pick the winner.  If it were up to me, that winner would be Simmonds.  He was such a part of the Philadelphia community before the trade, taking part in so many different initiatives.  My favorite thing, though, was getting a suite for a different military unit and meeting with them after every other game.

Adams: Jon Cooper, Lightning-Can the Blues just remove "interim" from Craig Berube's title already?!  I think he's done enough to warrant keeping the job permanently.  As great as he was after taking over in St. Louis, though, the job Jon Cooper did in Tampa Bay all (regular season) can't be overlooked.  They tied for the league record in wins and had the fourth-most points in NHL history.  They won 30 games at home and 30 games on the road!  And they didn't lose more than two games in a row at any point (until it mattered most, when they lost four straight).  I'm not at all discounting what Barry Trotz did with the Islanders, either.  Any other year, he'd be a slam dunk winner.

GM: Doug Armstrong, Blues-There are a lot of people who deserve credit for the Blues' run from 31st place in the NHL to 1st.  None more so than GM Doug Armstrong.  He promoted Berube to head coach, but, more importantly, he decided to stand pat when he easily could've been a seller at the trade deadline.  And his faith in the roster that he had was certainly rewarded.  Even if St. Louis hadn't won the Cup, that decision would've been the right one.

So there you have it.  Those are the 2018-19 Joe Brackets NHL Award winners.  This isn't baseball, where they're far more obvious and I'm generally pretty accurate.  So, we'll see how I did.