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NHL Awards Preview, Messier Leadership Award

by Hockey in the News, NHL Awards • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

For my 3rd installment of NHL Award Previews (see Norris trophy and Calder trophy articles), I will cover the Messier Leadership Award. It is the newest award, with its introduction in 2007. The Messier Leadership Award has been presented to Chris Chelios, Mats Sundin, Jarome Iginla, Sidney Crosby, and reigning awardee Zdeno Chara.

What do these players have in common? They have all stepped up to lead their teams when they were needed most. Chelios won in 2007, the year after Steve Yzerman retired. Yzerman was not only the longest serving captain of the Red Wings, but the longest serving NHL captain of all time with a 20 year tenure. Those are some big shoes to fill, and Chelios did that without even wearing a “C”. When Chara won the award last year, he was both the captain of his team and a recent Stanley Cup winner.

Messier’s choices show a wide range of players. Some have formal leadership roles, while others step up when they see fit. Some players are defensemen, while others are forwards. Some leaders thrive in community initiatives off the ice, while others see on-ice success. Winners of the award have also been from a wide array of countries including Canada, USA, Slovakia, and Sweden.

According to Messier, this year’s candidates are Dustin Brown of the LA Kings, Ryan Callahan of the NY Rangers, and Shane Doan of the Phoenix Coyotes.

  • Dustin Brown helped lead the Kings to their Stanley Cup win. He has respect from his teammates and rightfully so. Kings defenseman  Matt Green said (about Brown), “Well, he’s not a rah-rah guy, we don’t have too many of those guys in the room. But he knows how to lead, and he does it by example.”
  • Ryan Callahan led the Rangers into the playoffs as the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference. Callahan inspires his team by getting down to work and scoring goals when his team needs it. He is also an important leader for Rangers fans as the first NY native to wear the coveted Rangers “C”.
  • Shane Doan was instrumental in gaining the Coyotes first ever division title. The Coyotes also had an amazing playoff run despite low fan engagement and ownership issues. According to Coyotes coach Dave Tippett, “You don’t see all the things happening behind the scenes, in the dressing room, the inspiration he is to the other guys there, how he cares about this team and winning”.
All three players are fit to win the Messier Leadership Award. They are inspirational, talented, and are the go-to man for their respective teams. So who will win? Logic tells me it will be Doan who has faced so many club/off-ice issues and yet so much team success. However, it is hard to imagine that Mark “We are going to win it” Messier not choosing a Ranger as talented as Ryan Callahan.

Staged Fights, Should the NHLPA Allow It?

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by Hockey in the News, NHL Fights • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Regardless of your stance on NHL fighting, this video is pretty shocking. I have a couple of quick points I would like to address regarding this multi-fight madness:

  1. There should be clear-cut line between fights to change the momentum of the game and staged fights to beat the living hell out of the other team (aka fights off the face-off). Isn’t player safety more important than a fight about starting lineups and angry coaches before the game has even started?
  2. If you are going to put a defenseman in the circle for the face-off, you are looking for trouble.
  3. Ryan Carter is quite the bleeder.
  4. Fights should not occur before anything in the game happens. Those coaches should be punished for that type of staged chaos. And Tortorella should be ashamed for yelling curses at DeBoer from the bench, real classy John.
  5. This is not the first time these two teams have gone at it within the first couple seconds of the hockey game. It has actually happened twice already in the past year (December 2011 and February 2012). Shouldn’t something be done to stop this trend?
  6. This kind of fighting is not ‘part of the game’. The NHL isn’t MMA fighting and there should not be mindless bashing-in of skulls without cause. Pierre Lebrun of ESPN said this about the fight: