Giving this to a goalie has always annoyed me. Everyone who has watched hockey for a long time knows that there are always some ”hot” goalies and in their case I say that of the 35 teams nr 1 goalies, all of them are capable to have a hot streak or good playoffs.
It is such an easy decision where you kind of are never wrong cause there is no one to compare you to. On the other hand out of the lines there are almost 15 players in each team that could have great playoffs and battle for this at the beginning of The playoffs. Ofc realisticly there are 5-7 usually. But they really must perform every game at 100%. The work that a player has to do to win the trophy is totally different to the goalies. And goalies don’t even play in every game..!?
I know that that you have to have a super goalie to win the cup and in hockey in general. I am not saying it isn’t difficult to them or taking anything away from shutouts and I admire every goalie who are tremendous. It is awesome to watxh when it seems that someone just catches everything and is keeping the the team in the game or protecting a lead....But it is kind of an obvious situation that the goalie from the winning team has been awesome. Then you have players that also deserve it and sorry folks but I just say that this should always be given to a player not goalie. from them you really can say and see feom shift to shift how well someone is performing night after night under pressure...
But about who it should go to now. Idk. Hedman is the best D in the league and if tampa wins there shouldn’t be any question who gets it and Hedman should finally be recognised for the beast that he is.
I haven’t followed that much Dallas, but from the games that I have seen there is no doubt in my mind that it should be Heiskanen, although pretty sure it will go to someone like benn instead if they win cause nobody knows who the f*** is heiskanen so it is better for the league. But I have to add that I actually think Heiskanen was evwn better than Hedman on the games that I saw feom Dallas. Just insane. He is going to be a superstar if he isn’t already. The confidence, skating, eye, pass etc that he has are just perfect and he knows also How to defend unlike E karlsson or Subban for an example.
Just sooooo boring if it goes to a goalie!!