Draisaitl, Carlson are easy picks for NHL’s awards
The NHL ended its regular season last week and handed out some of its endof-season awards. Alex Ovechkin and David Pastrnak shared the the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy, awarded to the NHL’s top goal scorer, with 48 goals. It was the ninth win for the Capitals captain and first for the Bruins forward. This is the third time the award will be shared and first since Steven Stamkos and Sidney Crosby tied with 51 goals in 2009-10. Leon Draisaitl easily won the Art Ross Trophy for leading the league in points and Boston goaltenders Tuukka Rask and Jaroslav Halak earn the William M. Jennings Trophy for allowing the fewest goals (167 goals in 70 games played, 2.39 goals allowed per game). Along with those individual awards, the Boston Bruins get the Presidents’ Trophy for leading the league standings with 100 points.
The rest of the major end-of-season awards are subject to vote. What follows is a look at the most deserving players for those awards. determining how many standings points a player contributed. This year that short list includes David Pastrnak, Draisaitl and Artemi Panarin.
Draisaitl won his first Art Ross Trophy with 110 points, making him the only player to reach the 100-point plateau this season. The 24year-old also finished 13 points ahead of teammate Connor McDavid, a former Hart Trophy winner himself, who was second. If we adjust Draisaitl’s point tally to an 82-game schedule with other caveats to make an apples-to-apples comparison to players from different eras he projects to 128 adjusted points, good enough for 38th on the all-time adjusted points list and the same as the reigning Hart winner Nikita Kucherov had last season.
Plus, Draisaitl also led the league in goals created, another metric illustrating his importance to his club.
One more thing. Before you try and argue Draisaitl had a phenomenal season because he and McDavid skate together often, consider Draisaitl skated 610 minutes at even strength without McDavid on the ice this season and the Oilers outscored opponents 35 to 26 during that time.
“I think I’ve always been more of the pass-first type of guy, but I knew early on in my career in the NHL that I have to be a threat to shoot once in a while, too, otherwise I’m too predictable,” Draisaitl said. “It’s just something I’ve worked on constantly during the summer, in season, whenever it was, so it’s something I had to put into my game.” with the latter special teams could be challenged, yet opponents had a relatively low quality of shot when he was on the ice (6.4 expected goals against per 60 minutes, 37th out of 104 qualified defensemen). team two high-danger goals over average whereas Hellebuyck allowed six more than expected.
Flyers
The Jack Adams Award is bestowed by the NHL Broadcasters’ Association to “the NHL coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team’s success.” It can be hard to evaluate how much a team’s performance is due to the players or the coach, but I think we can all agree expectations are important. After all, if you coach a team that is expected to make a run at the Presidents’ Trophy you shouldn’t get extra credit for winning the Presidents’ Trophy.
To determine expectations, we will look at the preseason point percentage set by the oddsmakers and compare that to a team’s actual point percentage earned during the regular season. If a team exceeds those expectations then their coach deserves some praise. This method isn’t a fail-safe way to establish expectations but it is a decent enough proxy. We will also use the odds for each team to make the playoffs. For example, the Columbus Blue Jackets had an implied playoff probability of 70% in the preseason but an actual playoff probability of 34% per Hockey Reference at the time of the season’s end (not including the change to a 24team format), hardly living up to expectations in this case.
Alain Vigneault, on the other hand, guided his Philadelphia Flyers to 89 points (41-21-7) and a second-place finish in the Metropolitan division, earning the club a bye week through the playin round. They were expected to earn 90 or 91 points over a full season, which equates to 76 points over their 69-game shortened season, exceeding expectations by 13 points. They were also only given a 50-50 chance to make the playoffs before the puck dropped on the regular season.