2014 NHL Award Nominations

Hart Trophy (MVP):

1. Sidney Crosby

MVP is supposed to go to the most valuable player to his team. But it never does. The Penguins would still be great without Crybaby, but he had the most outstanding year by far. 

2. Ryan Getzlaf

A lot of people think Ovechkin should be here. Those people are crazy and know nothing about hockey. 

3. Claude Giroux

Giroux was the most valuable player to his team, easily. The Flyers would be nothing without him. 

Vezina Trophy (Goalie)

1. Tuuka Rask

Stood on his head the 2nd half of the year and lead Boston to a Presidents Trophy and the title of scariest team in the NHL. He definitely deserves the hardware.

2. Semyon Varlamov

Probably the most questionable character in the NHL after that whole kidnapping his wife thing. But awards are won (or in this case not won) by what you do on the ice, not off. 

3. Ben Bishop

Bishop was the Vezina winner for most of the season until the Bruins went on their tear. 

Norris Trophy (defenseman)

1. Shea Webber

2. Erik Karlsson

3. Duncan Keith

Honorary nomination to Andrew MacDonald since he lead the league in blocked shots. 

Calder Trophy (Rookie)

1. Nathon MacKinnon

No brainer

2. Ondrej Palat

Did you think we would nominate someone from the Lightning other than Drouin?

3. Hampus Lindholm

Where's Seth Jones?

Selke Trophy (Defensive Forward)

1. Patrice Bergeron

There's a reason he and Kreci lead in plus/minus. 

2. Anze Kopitar

3. Jonathan Toews

Jack Adams Award

1. Jon Cooper

2. Patrick Roy

3. Claude Julien

Let me be clear. When you turn a team around like Patrick Roy did in Colorado, you deserve coach of the year. When you turn a team around like Michel Therien did in Montreal last year, you don't deserve a nomination. The Jack Adams award is flaud. If Therien didn't get nominated last year, Roy is winning this year. Plus Cooper had a lot less to work with in Tampa Bay when you account the Stamkos injury

2014 Stanley Cup Playoff Picks

Sorry Flyers :( #GoHabsGo

Also I had the Sharks winning the Cup as my preseason pick. The great part about the Stanley Cup Playoffs is that all 16 teams have a chance to win. Buckle Up.

Alex Ovechkin: The Oskar Kokoshka of Sports

Look at this.

The "face" of the NHL.

We have all seen the .gif of Ovi not moving against the Rangers almost as if someone was playing NHL 14 and they're controller disconnected. Well it happened again Tuesday night in the Caps 5-0 blowout loss to the Stars. The Caps are 1 game out of the Playoffs and won't make it playing like that. Every other team has a push. They know they're destined to fail. 

He is DEAD LAST in the entire league in plus/minus. So technically, you can say he is the least productive player in the NHL. The league leader in goals. The worst team player.

Nobody questions his talent. He is arguably still the most talented player in the world. But the most prestigious individual award in sports goes to the most valuable player 'to his team'. The player who allows more goals than scores more than any other player is far from it.

There are two major figures of a sport that certainly needs it. The other one is a girl trapped in a man's body who isn't nearly as fun to watch as Ovi, and his team is even less fun to watch win. Hockey fans everywhere should hope Alex The Great wakes up one day, before his inevitable return to Russia.

Lazy people don't usually become famous with the exception of Paris Hilton and the entire Kardashian family. So we will just compare him to Oskar, the "Hey Arnold" character who liked to eat pickles. Fitting since they're both communists.

Why The Olympics are Good for the NHL

At 10:00 AM, I turned on SportsCenter. Yesterday was an exceptionally dramatic day in the sports world, consisting of the face of baseball announcing he will call it quits this season, the Richie Incognito/Jonathan Martin fiasco publicly reaching a new low, a wild buzzer beater in Pittsburgh, and of course ESPN's bread and butter LeBron James hitting a game winning 3-pointer in the late hours of the evening.

All these booming stories and the headline of the morning is...HOCKEY?!?!?!

I must be dreaming. Today's episode began with coverage of Team USA's 7-1 rout of the Slovaks in the opening game for both teams. ESPN will go full shows without even mentioning the sport during the NHL Regular Season. They give Barry Melrose (their only TV hockey analyst) anywhere from 2-3 segments a week to review a couple games and what's going on in the hockey world. Nowhere near the time they spend talking about other major professional and college sports.

The National Hockey League does not receive the nation-wide following other sports get and only becomes the top story on SportsCenter during the playoffs and the Stanley Cup Final. Champions in other major leagues are dedicated most, if not all of the showtime, while last year the Blackhawks got about five minutes. And it only gets a few minutes to be covered because it competes with the attention the NBA Playoffs are getting, and to ESPN that is no contest.

Thank God the NHL doesn't run the Olympics. They are the only way the sport of hockey can attract attention to itself. People love it, get excited, and the sport becomes more popular. The Super Bowl, World Cup, and Olympics are in a class by themselves. That is inarguable.

I am not naive. I know the NHL, in areas in the South is not even considered a major sport. But the NHL is to the South as NASCAR is to the North, and plenty of national attention is given to auto racing.

We all know why the NHL is singled out. ESPN promotes the events it covers more than others simply because they are a business and want to make money. The more people that watch their broadcasts, the more valuable their network is. The statement that defends this argument the most is the fact that Women's College Basketball is a more important story than the hotter than hot battles for playoff spots in the NHL. With all due respect to the great female athletes of the NCAA, you cannot seriously tell me they produce a more popular game than men's professional hockey. Gary Bettman and the NHL thought it would be better to not to stick with ESPN and their overwhelming control of the sports world. And since then began an outcast of not the sport of hockey, but the just NHL.

The Harris Poll recently released a study showing football and baseball with the majority popularity, 60 percent of fans saying one of them (NFL, NCAA football, and MLB) being their favorite sport. Auto Racing, the NBA, NHL, and College Basketball all being within four percent of each other, another argument to ask why the NHL is treated differently.

Something that will be very interesting to see is how ESPN will treat NASCAR when it no longer covers it and will hand over its broadcasts to NBC Sports.

A perfect scenario would be Team USA bringing home the gold and giving the most possible attention to a sport that could use it. We can only hope. The dream continues Saturday 7:30AM EST against the Russians.