You Can Change Each Award Once

[GMR]

Hart - Pavel Bure in 2000

Vezina - Luongo in 2004

Norris - Coffey in 1984

Conn Smythe - Kessel in 2016 (if I were older, I'd pick Bossy in 1981)

Selke - no clear robberies here. Too hard an award to judge. Very reputation based. Too much emphasis on stats. I wish the players would vote for this award.

Calder - nothing stands out other than Modano / Makarov. Those were different rules, though, as others pointed out.

Lady Byng - Lidstrom at least once

 

[Theokritos]

Calder: 1989-90, Mike Modano
Sergei Makarov was a rookie in name only. He's one of the greatest right wingers to ever play the game, but his Calder win absolutely was not in the spirit of the award. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how on earth the voters felt that it was more appropriate to give the award to a 31-year-old veteran over a 19-year-old kid who made such a splash in what was actually his rookie year. In fact, it's so obvious to me that it wasn't, that this was the easiest pick of all for me to make.

No doubt Modano deserved it in the spirit of the award, but I find it hard to blame the voters. The rules made Makarov eligible and he was clearly the best player out of all eligible players, so you can't blame them. The rules shouldn't have been what they were, though.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Sure, if it was a number based trophy like the Art Ross or the Jennings I'd be fine with Thomas winning it. The description for the Vezina in recent times is that it is awarded to the best goaltender, and I do not think that Thomas was ever the best goaltender in the NHL. Thomas' numbers were the best at times though.

That's fair.

Just wondering, is it Thomas's style of play or the teams he played on that lead you to believe he wasn't the best goaltender in those two seasons?

 

[JackSlater]

That's fair.

Just wondering, is it Thomas's style of play or the teams he played on that lead you to believe he wasn't the best goaltender in those two seasons?

Just watching him. Nothing more than that really. I think that the team significantly boosted his numbers but his play was his own.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

3 really egregious ones stand out to me as qualifying as robbery.

1989-90 Hart going to Messier over Bourque
2010-11 Norris going to Lidstrom over Weber. The career achievement Norris might be the worst voting choice in league history
2015-16 Smythe going to Crosby over Kessel. Kessel got them that Cup.

 

[sr edler]

• Pearson/Lindsay – I echo Forsberg in 02–03

• Hart – I like Toews in 2013 too.

• Smythe – Too many to pick from. But Julien in 2011. When no player stands out from the rest of the group, might as well give it to the grumpy guy on the bench pulling all the cynical strings.

• Norris – I wish I could say Edler was robbed of at least 1.

• Lady Byng – Martin St. Louis won three of those but kinda struck me as somewhat of a whiner.

• Art Ross Trophy – Lindros & Jagr should've split it. You can't have an award for points and then have external tiebreakers, that's dumb.

Calder - 1991-92, Lidstrom over Bure. I know Bure had the wow factor and a great finish to the season, but Lidstrom looks to have been clearly more valuable over the course of the year, helping drive the Wings to a 22 point improvement and division title.

Pretty fair considering Bure came in 10+ games into the season after sitting and waiting in California, plus had a mid-season slump. Lidström had a way more consistent campaign, and was 3rd on his team in plus/minus. Say if Bure had his 22 goals in 23 games stretch at mid season instead, and slumped at the end instead, would he have won the Calder? Perhaps not. Statistically he didn't have that great of a season, but on the other hand I think he showed stuff outside of the score sheet (versatility, speed, stick skills, puck control, played on the PK, played both wings) that translated into the real deal in the upcoming years. You say wow factor, but I think it was more of an eye factor. People saw it was for reals.

Hart - Pavel Bure in 2000

If Bure had played all games that year (he missed 8) and scored 60+ goals and 100+ points with the Panthers making the playoffs, I think that could have given him the Hart. That necessarily wouldn't have made him a better player that year than Jagr/Pronger, but the Hart as we know isn't a best player trophy.

 

[quoipourquoi]

I can agree that taking Hasek from his actual finish to a win is a stretch considering how far he has to rise, but when I look at that season, I come to the conclusion that he was the best. I think probably part of what draws me to that season is that he finished so ridiculously low. There probably was a bit of North American bias, but I wonder about one other thing too. I may be way off base here, but Harry Howell's comment after he won the Norris comes to mind when he said he was glad he won it when he did because Bobby Orr was going to own it going forward. Hasek exploded onto the scene so impressively two years earlier and had maintained his level of play ever since that I can't help but wonder if some of the voters might have felt that he was going to dominate the award for so long that they saw 1996 as an opportunity to give someone else a chance. That could be simply 20/20 hindsight, but he was so good that it would have been hard to see anyone else topping him.

Hasek and Puppa each had a .919 on April 1st. Hasek ended the season as an injured player, playing just 1 of the Sabres’ final 6 games, meanwhile Daren Puppa played 6 consecutive games in 9 days to boost the Lightning into the playoffs... at a marginal cost to his save percentage.

8th is too low, but any ranking above Puppa specifically might also be hard to justify in mid-April 1996 when voters had just seen an injured player win a statistical race by not playing. Perhaps one can place a premium on SA while ignoring the playoff push narrative, but it wasn’t an issue of North American bias that an injured player on a non-playoff team with a marginal statistical victory wasn’t a favorite.

24 years later when it looks like a .920 to .918 race with voters siding with a high-GP, high-SO, meh-save percentage goaltender? Yeah, it looks strange. But it wouldn’t be the first Vezina I would look at sideways. The line for sympathy Vezinas to injured goaltenders should begin with Marty Turco in 2003, who watched his team go 7-8-3 (Turco was 31-10-10 on the season) and lose ground in the President’s Trophy race while he was out.


While there are all sorts of players who have won awards on end of the season hot streaks, usually they were at least dark horse candidates prior to the final ~20 games. The 2013 Hart particularly stands out to me, due to the unusual nature of the favorite being taken out, the Art Ross winner being more or less disqualified by team effects, and the eventual winner Ovechkin being someone who prior to that final stretch was maybe facing the most criticism of his entire career. But I don’t know that there is a great candidate, so 1954 is probably the best answer off the top of my head.

I think 1st/2nd half voting vs. end of the year voting is probably enough to make a few look off by modern eyes.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

• Pearson/Lindsay – I echo Forsberg in 02–03

• Hart – I like Toews in 2013 too.

• Smythe – Too many to pick from. But Julien in 2011. When no player stands out from the rest of the group, might as well give it to the grumpy guy on the bench pulling all the cynical strings.

• Norris – I wish I could say Edler was robbed of at least 1.

• Lady Byng – Martin St. Louis won three of those but kinda struck me as somewhat of a whiner.

• Art Ross Trophy – Lindros & Jagr should've split it. You can't have an award for points and then have external tiebreakers, that's dumb.

Pretty fair considering Bure came in 10+ games into the season after sitting and waiting in California, plus had a mid-season slump. Lidström had a way more consistent campaign, and was 3rd on his team in plus/minus. Say if Bure had his 22 goals in 23 games stretch at mid season instead, and slumped at the end instead, would he have won the Calder? Perhaps not. Statistically he didn't have that great of a season, but on the other hand I think he showed stuff outside of the score sheet (versatility, speed, stick skills, puck control, played on the PK, played both wings) that translated into the real deal in the upcoming years. You say wow factor, but I think it was more of an eye factor. People saw it was for reals.



If Bure had played all games that year (he missed 8) and scored 60+ goals and 100+ points with the Panthers making the playoffs, I think that could have given him the Hart. That necessarily wouldn't have made him a better player that year than Jagr/Pronger, but the Hart as we know isn't a best player trophy.

Still salty?

Pretty sure this SCF line counts as "standing out"

.967 SV%
1.14 GAA
2 Shut Outs, including Game 7

Or an overall run of:

.940
1.98
4 SO
20.72 GSAA

Led the playoffs in shots against, saves, save %, GAA, GSAA.

 

[quoipourquoi]

To soften my criticism of the 2003 Vezina... Brodeur still won it going away. So maybe that’s a little less annoying than marginal wins where someone who is favored by only 25-33% of the voters takes a trophy over poor competition and then that becomes a bulletpoint that we have to read forever - no different than if they were unanimously regarded as the best in that category.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Calder - 1991-92, Lidstrom over Bure. I know Bure had the wow factor and a great finish to the season, but Lidstrom looks to have been clearly more valuable over the course of the year, helping drive the Wings to a 22 point improvement and division title.

the really silly thing is lidstrom was tied for second with amonte. lidstrom got more first place votes, which is as it should be. but the corollary of that is amonte appeared on more ballots. he actually got the most calder votes overall, with 67. lidstrom had 59, bure had 64. i think we all know why, but it was a farce.

as for the value part, well certainly both lidstrom and bure were more valuable to their teams than amonte was to his.

but remember that both lidstrom and bure walked onto teams that improved dramatically. vancouver improved 31 points, jumped from the 4th to 1st seed in the smythe, 5th last in the league to 4th.

detroit improved 22 points, 3rd to 1st seed in the norris, 14th (8th last) to 3rd in the league.

with vancouver, their clear MVP was kirk mclean, who put up what at the time was the single greatest season in canucks history. he finished behind roy for the vezina in what was one of the top three seasons of roy's entire career, 4th for the hart. the canucks were 10-4-1 out of the gate in the fifteen games before bure got there. not to say that bure didn't make a difference, because adding a scoring threat like that can't not help tremendously, but that team was already on the way up.

as for detroit, i'm looking at their dmen's GF and GA numbers and this is what i see:

	ES/SH GF	ES/SH GA	PP GF	PP GA
konstantinov	96	71	7	32
lidstrom	91	55	50	25
mccrimmon	82	43	15	35
chiasson (62 games)	71	49	33	29
chiasson (prorated)	92	63	43	37
racine (61 games)	51	57	18	12
racine (prorated)	67	75	24	16

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

i'm not exactly sure what this tells us, except that lidstrom was almost certainly the number one options on the PP and the number four on the PK. but i do wonder whether konstantinov and chiasson were more relied on—though i can also see the possibility that lidstrom/mccrimmon was just that good defensively that their ESGA numbers were lower.

all to say, though, i'm a little wary of the argument we hear a lot that detroit was never good until they had lidstrom running the show. at least defensively, it's not clear he was running the show yet when he got there. and it's also not clear that the addition of konstantinov didn't make just as big of a difference, if not bigger, on the defensive end.

As I approach the topic, I'll be guided by "how would legacies have changed if these season-end awards had gone in one direction rather than another?"

that's an interesting way to go here. for legacy purposes, potvin and fedorov probably should have won a conn smythe. i'd add brodeur and doughty to that list. as moose suggests above, it might have been nice for lemaire to get one too.

mark howe "deserves" a norris somewhere along the way, luongo a vezina. i think shea weber might "need" a norris, but i'm not completely sure he deserves one, though i also won't say he "didn't deserve" one, if you know what i mean.

tikkanen definitely deserved at least one selke.

Norris – I wish I could say Edler was robbed of at least 1.

i would have given him the 2010 conn smythe for that drew doughty hit alone.

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

Vezina: 2007. Luongo wins instead of Brodeur.

Brodeur was good that year and he (with the help of rule changes) broke Bernie Parent's wins record, but for me this isn't close. I am a Canucks fan and Luongo that year was the best goaltending I have ever seen outside of 90's era Hasek. The Sedins were figuring it out, but were at this point essentially elite 2nd liners playing on the top line. Our D was decent by committee and Vigneault was a hell of a coach. But Luongo WAS this team. It was incredible.

Hart: 2000. Jagr wins over Pronger.

Pronger was a true superstar, but everything broke right that year for the Blues. A lot of guys had career years and while I think Pronger probably contributed to that, I think he was also given a lot of the accolades for that team's success. Jagr gets punished for missing 19 games to injury, but he still won the Art Ross trophy. He had Kovalev, Lang, and Straka on his team just before their respective breakouts. He had no elite D, no elite G. It's basically him and the equivalent of a good 2nd line worth of forwards (all three would go on to become really good top liners).

Smythe: 2006. Pronger wins instead of Ward.
Ward always struck me as a really uninspiring, narrative driven winner. Gerber loses two games, in comes the rookie, and he plays well enough to support a really good team (who I think are lucky that the Sabres ran into almost unprecedented defensive injuries) to winning a cup.

Again, I'm a Canucks fan, I saw a lot of Edmonton. I remember them scaring me before they got Roloson. They outshot every team they played, but kept losing because Conklin and Markkanen were terrible.
Chris Pronger made Marc-Andre Bergeron a top pairing defense man on a cup finalist. He was one of the most dominant players I have ever seen during that run and he deserved this award.

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

Hart: 2005-06, Jaromir Jagr
(While I'm tempted to go with 1990-91 Gretzky, at least Wayne got his 'mulligan' Hart for 1988-89, so it's all fair.) This 2006 Hart trophy should have been a no-brainer:
-- Jagr played 82 games for the Rangers; Thornton played 58 games for the Sharks. (So, right there, that should disqualify Thornton, but there's more):
-- Negligible point difference between the two players (2 more points for Thornton, while Jagr was +3 better in plus/minus). So, again, scoring being even, you give it to the guy who actually played the full season for the team!
-- Jagr scored more even-strength goals than Thornton scored total goals!
-- Jagr voted the Pearson award.
-- Rangers made the playoffs for the first time in 9 years, improving 31 points in Jagr's first full season, while the Sharks fell 5 points (and from 1st to 2nd in division) with the acquisition of Thornton.

This was just a horrible bungling of this award. I wouldn't make a big deal out of it if Jagr had already won two or three Harts, but since he had been remarkably unfortunate in getting only the one to this point in his career, this one was a travesty.

I agree with your conclusion but I think you're being a bit unfair in getting there.

Most valuable to his team doesn't mean most valuable to one team. I know you can say Thornton getting dealt means he wasn't valuable to Boston, but that's why it's an all-time blunder. If I recall, he had like 33 points in 23 games with Boston. He obviously wasn't playing like a Hart winner, but he was playing well enough that it can be added to his time with the Sharks. Also, the Sharks were palpably different once he arrived. However, the Rangers had been pathetic for almost a decade and Jagr had been making them look different all year.

I’ve always disliked it when a player from a losing team wins the Conn. Here goes, plus a couple of others I thought the voters got wrong. Yeah, I know I’m not doing this right.

1966 Conn Smythe - JC Tremblay
1968 Conn Smythe - Gump Worsley. Had better numbers than Hall plus faced better competition.
1976 Conn Smythe - Ken Dryden, although Leach does imo have the best ever case for a player from a losing team.
1979 Conn Smythe - Jacques Lemaire. Gainey was very good , but Lemaire was better and he never win a major award.
1981 Conn Smythe - Denis Potvin. He was probably the most important player during their 4 cup run, and it looks wrong that he never won a Conn. Goring was very good though.
1987 Conn Smythe - Glen Anderson or Gretzky
2003 Conn Smythe - Martin Brodeur. He kicked Giguerres butt in the finals.

Hard disagree. Why should the most valuable player of the playoffs be discounted based on his teammates inferiority? I personally think players from losing teams should have won several more Smythes than they have.

 

[sharkbyte]

While I agree the award should have gone to Lemieux, as imperfect NHL awards go, this one isn't overly hard to understand, is it? The Kings went from 4th-worst overall to 4th-best overall in the season Gretzky joined, while the Pens had a solid but not overly impressive season. I guarantee you that if, say, Dale Hawerchuk had scored 168 points in 1984-85 (when the Jets had their biggest season), he would have won the Hart instead of 208-point Gretzky. You have to remember that there is a team-success narrative attached to basically every Hart trophy (which is why, for example, Bobby Orr didn't win the 1974-75 Hart, despite winning the scoring title and going +80).

Anyway, my choices:

Hart: 2005-06, Jaromir Jagr
(While I'm tempted to go with 1990-91 Gretzky, at least Wayne got his 'mulligan' Hart for 1988-89, so it's all fair.) This 2006 Hart trophy should have been a no-brainer:
-- Jagr played 82 games for the Rangers; Thornton played 58 games for the Sharks. (So, right there, that should disqualify Thornton, but there's more):
-- Negligible point difference between the two players (2 more points for Thornton, while Jagr was +3 better in plus/minus). So, again, scoring being even, you give it to the guy who actually played the full season for the team!
-- Jagr scored more even-strength goals than Thornton scored total goals!
-- Jagr voted the Pearson award.
-- Rangers made the playoffs for the first time in 9 years, improving 31 points in Jagr's first full season, while the Sharks fell 5 points (and from 1st to 2nd in division) with the acquisition of Thornton.

This was just a horrible bungling of this award. I wouldn't make a big deal out of it if Jagr had already won two or three Harts, but since he had been remarkably unfortunate in getting only the one to this point in his career, this one was a travesty.

Norris: 1983-84, Paul Coffey
This was probably Coffey's greatest-ever season. Voters would finally be swayed to award him the '85 and '86 Norrises (and much later the '95), but he should have taken this one, no doubt about it. Nothing against Rod Langway, and full marks for his 1983 Norris, but giving him yet another one in '84 (when he was alongside two future Hall of Famers on the blue line) was just silliness, and reeked of Eastern-voters' spite against Edmonton.

Vezina: 1987-88, Patrick Roy
Some of you think I'm hard on Roy sometimes, but look, I'm awarding him an extra Vezina and taking one away from my own team! Goalies should not win major awards because they played a lot of games. That is the only reason Grant Fuhr won the '88 Vezina. I ask you: If Fuhr won the '88 Vezina, why didn't Gary 'Suitcase' Smith win it in 1974-75 when he played 72 games and had a good, winning record for low-talent Vancouver... and his stats were all superior to Fuhr's??

Calder: 1979-80, Wayne Gretzky or if that doesn't fly, then 1989-90, Mike Modano
Completely agree with the OP. That Makarov thing was just stupid. Why are the NHL such idiots? Either Gretzky wasn't a rookie and Makarov wasn't either, or they both were, but you sure as hell can't have it both ways, unless you're idiotic. Oh! Hello, NHL.

Conn Smythe: undecided!
I think most of the Conn Smythes are more-or-less correct. Sometimes, there is someone I would have preferred, but usually I can see the case for the guy who won it. (Speaking of Grant Fuhr, he legitimately could have won the 1987 Conn Smythe!) My probable choice here would be Joe Sakic over Patrick Roy in 2001. Butch Goring in '81 seems a little suspect to me, too, but that was before my time, so I'll defer to the experts...

While I don't disagree with the argument for Jagr as the Hart winner that year, the bolded is not exactly accurate. The Sharks had lost 10 (!) in a row before they pulled off the trade for Jumbo on 11/30/05 and were sitting at 8-12-4. They finished that season 44-27-11 which means after acquiring Jumbo they went 36-15-7. I think that's a pretty notable bump. That 05-06 Sharks team pre-Jumbo mostly consisted of 03-04 holdovers except for Damphousse and Ricci and they were struggling mightily.

Also, I'm not quite sure how that was a "horrible bungling" of the award with the points being so close. I'm biased, but are you basically penalizing Thornton for having been traded mid-season? And while Jagr had an impressive goal-scoring season, Thornton put up 96 assists that year...I don't see how it's that absurd to give Thornton the award..

 

[The Panther]

Gretzky over Mario was certainly an all-time screwing.

Bear in mind that Mario had won the Hart the previous season when his team... missed the playoffs.

To repeat: I concur that Lemieux deserved the '89 Hart, but this line (you're the second) that it was an all-time insult of hockey awarding, or whatever, is just silly. Just isolate for a second on Gretzky's season and its context ("context" being essential to every single Hart winner in history): His team went from 4th worst to 4th best, surpassing his previous Dynasty team in the standings, and he scored 168 points (which, except for Mario that very season and his own past self, was the highest point total in NHL history).

I can see the argument for Mario's win in 1988 and I don't have a problem with it, but are we really going to argue that Gretzky scoring 168 points and his (first year) team going from 4th worst to 4th best is a travesty of the Hart, while Mario's scoring 168 points and his team missing the playoffs, just the season prior, is entirely justified?

I guess because the league allowed Peter Stastny to be a Calder winner they had to let Makarov be eligible.

As someone else mentioned, the age difference is really big. Stastny turned 24 during his first NHL training camp. Makarov was 31 during his. That's 7 years difference -- 7 years, by the way, is Makarov's entire NHL career.

The League has since set it at, what, 26? I guess that's about right. (Joe Juneau was 24-25 when he almost won the Calder in 1993.) I have no issue with a 23 or 24-year old winning the Calder, but a guy who's over 30 and has spent a dozen years already playing on one of the great teams is just... silliness in the extreme.

 

[The Panther]

3 really egregious ones stand out to me as qualifying as robbery.

1989-90 Hart going to Messier over Bourque

There is of course a case for Bourque over Messier in 1989-90, but your (understandably 'homer' influenced) line that it was "robbery" is just silly.

As a huge fan of both players, I would say that both fully deserved it. I have rarely seen one guy elevate his team with leadership and on-ice performance like Messier in 1989-90 -- he was a tower of power, and it was easily his single greatest season. Bear in mind that Messier (not Bourque) was voted the Pearson by fellow NHL players.

(That said, it would have been nice for Bourque to win a Hart just to quiet the Lidstrom-over-Bourque crowd!)

 

[The Panther]

While I don't disagree with the argument for Jagr as the Hart winner that year, the bolded is not exactly accurate. The Sharks had lost 10 (!) in a row before they pulled off the trade for Jumbo on 11/30/05 and were sitting at 8-12-4. They finished that season 44-27-11 which means after acquiring Jumbo they went 36-15-7. I think that's a pretty notable bump. That 05-06 Sharks team pre-Jumbo mostly consisted of 03-04 holdovers except for Damphousse and Ricci and they were struggling mightily.

Yes, the Sharks' struggles early in 2005-06 clearly played a part in the media-narrative that Jumbo Joe had single-handedly raised their fortunes! I don't buy it, though. Teams have losing streaks all the time, and the Sharks were already a good team before the lock-out.

As you know, however, the Rangers' struggles had been deeper and had lasted for 9 years -- quite a bit bigger than the ten game-slump Thornton walked into.

At any rate, if two players had similar offensive seasons, I just don't see awarding the Hart to the guy who played 58 games for one team. It makes no sense. The Hart Memorial Trophy is clearly defined as being awarded to the "player judged most valuable to his team" -- it doesn't say his "team, or teams".

 

[The Panther]

• Art Ross Trophy – Lindros & Jagr should've split it. You can't have an award for points and then have external tiebreakers, that's dumb.

See also Dionne at Gretzky's expense in 1980.

 

[c9777666]

Hart- Patrick Roy 2002

Norris- Al MacInnis 2003

Vezina- Ed Belfour 2003

Conn Smythe- Steve Yzerman 2002

Calder- Mark Stone 2015

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Bear in mind that Mario had won the Hart the previous season when his team... missed the playoffs.

To repeat: I concur that Lemieux deserved the '89 Hart, but this line (you're the second) that it was an all-time insult of hockey awarding, or whatever, is just silly. Just isolate for a second on Gretzky's season and its context ("context" being essential to every single Hart winner in history): His team went from 4th worst to 4th best, surpassing his previous Dynasty team in the standings, and he scored 168 points (which, except for Mario that very season and his own past self, was the highest point total in NHL history).

I can see the argument for Mario's win in 1988 and I don't have a problem with it, but are we really going to argue that Gretzky scoring 168 points and his (first year) team going from 4th worst to 4th best is a travesty of the Hart, while Mario's scoring 168 points and his team missing the playoffs, just the season prior, is entirely justified?
As someone else mentioned, the age difference is really big. Stastny turned 24 during his first NHL training camp. Makarov was 31 during his. That's 7 years difference -- 7 years, by the way, is Makarov's entire NHL career.

The League has since set it at, what, 26? I guess that's about right. (Joe Juneau was 24-25 when he almost won the Calder in 1993.) I have no issue with a 23 or 24-year old winning the Calder, but a guy who's over 30 and has spent a dozen years already playing on one of the great teams is just... silliness in the extreme.

That doesn't change the fact that Mario scored 31 more points and was a +41 while Gretzky was a +15.

As for the year before, no one scored more than 168 that season.

 

[The Panther]

That doesn't change the fact that Mario scored 31 more points and was a +41 while Gretzky was a +15.

As for the year before, no one scored more than 168 that season.

I'm not trying to change any facts. You simply ignored my points.

 

[Boxscore]

Hart: 1988-89, Mario Lemieux
I've never been able to wrap my head around why this one went to Gretzky, other than chalking it up to excitement over his being in a market like Los Angeles. Lemieux was only a single point away from joining Gretzky in the 200-point club, and is one of only three players to ever score 80 in a season, thanks to his 85 goals that year. Given that Gretzky and Lemieux tied in assists, and I think it can be agreed that piling up goals is is a bigger deal than racking up assists, I really can't figure out how 54>85.

Norris: 2015-16, Erik Karlsson
I'll admit that Coffey in 1983-84 was an attractive option here, but for Karlsson to be the first defensemen since Orr, and the only one other than Orr to lead the league in assists since the league's infancy, as well as picking up a rare top five finish in scoring for a blueliner, despite being on a team that would have been a complete dumpster fire without him has to top it. Doughty was great that year, but Karlsson literally had a season for the ages.

I agree with both of these a million percent. Gretz edging out Mario in 88-89 was a shocker and Karlsson was absolutely robbed of that Norris.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Some follow-up takes for this first post of the year...

Not sure about Dionne for the '80 Hart, though...

I don't blame you for not being sure- a segment-by-segment look at THIS Dionne season suggests that Dionne started out on-fire, and then faded down-the-stretch: exactly what you DON'T want at that time of year. However (like Paul Harvey's "Rest-of-the-Story"), Dionne's fade can be directly attributed to being denuded of his Wingers through injuries- starting shortly before the mid-point of the year. The replacement-Wingers (Glenn Goldup, among others) were just wretched, in context.

Dionne plus season-long healthy line-mates would have equalled Hart Trophy in a walk. [Reviewing this season also gave me a new-found respect for Dave Taylor. Wow, did his absence hurt that team...]

[Dionne] won consecutive Pearsons, which shows what the players themselves thought of him, yet no one seems to care as much for that award (which is a crying shame in my opinion).

Pearson/Lindsay to Hart comparisons are particularly edifying when comparing positions apples-to-apples style. I think it was @TheDevilMadeMe-- or it may have been @seventieslord (or possibly both) that helped me focus on the fact that, as surely as the Hart Trophy can exhibit Eastern Time Zone bias, the Pearson-Lindsay can exhibit additional Forward bias- naturally so since the NHLPA has c. double the number of Forwards as compared to Defensemen. [If you think Orr is under-rated by Hart, check out his Pearson record!]

I’ve always disliked it when a player from a losing team wins the Conn.

This never bothered me as much- but if you think this happens too much with the Smythe, you should see what Retro-Smythes look like.

I AM gratified by the multiple mentions of Fedorov for Smythe- he doesn't get anywhere near enough credit for being a money-player.

 

[MS]

Calder - 1991-92, Lidstrom over Bure. I know Bure had the wow factor and a great finish to the season, but Lidstrom looks to have been clearly more valuable over the course of the year, helping drive the Wings to a 22 point improvement and division title.

I mean, if this is your rationale then Bure helped drive Vancouver to a 31 point improvement and division title, so edge : Bure.

Lidstrom scored over half his points on the Fedorov/Yzerman Wings PP. The immortal Yves Racine scored at a 62 point pace in exactly the same role the previous year.

 

[overpass]

I mean, if this is your rationale then Bure helped drive Vancouver to a 31 point improvement and division title, so edge : Bure.

Lidstrom scored over half his points on the Fedorov/Yzerman Wings PP. The immortal Yves Racine scored at a 62 point pace in exactly the same role the previous year.

The other thing about Bure is he missed the first 15 games of the season. And the Canucks were 10-4-1 in those games.

But I don’t feel that strongly about this comparison, and I understand the desire to reward the better player who missed games rather than the more valuable season, so I’ll change my Calder switch to give it to Mark Stone in 2014-15.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

I'll put the case I feel most strongly about here in the lede...

1934-1935- Eddie Shore was awarded a Hart Trophy that Charlie Conacher comprehensively deserved. To quote from one of my earlier posts (with relevant text highlighted)...

1934-1935: 36G (1st) 21A 57P (1st, by 10p over nearest pursuer), 1st Team All-Star, Team again wins Prince of Wales trophy and leads circuit in goals scored. Speaking of goal-scoring, this is maybe THE great goal-scoring season, pre-Howe. The 36 potted led 2nd place by eleven. Led in: Goals. Even-strength goals. Game-winning goals. First goals. [Only tied for 2nd in Power-play goals, though.] As stated upthread, 2nd place in the Hart to Shore.

Eddie Shore did not gap Defensemen in offensive output the way Conacher gapped fellow Forwards that year. This looks like a HOSEJOB, to me.

Conacher has about an equally compelling case to have been awarded the 1933-1934 Hart instead of Aurèle Joliat... but (sticking to the premise of the thread) I can only change one- so it's the 34-35 one I'd switch. Shore can spare one of his Hart trophies- and we're not likely to think much less of him if he has one fewer. Some memories (and really good trivia) are carved away from the lore if we take away Joliat's lone Hart Trophy...