Photos: NHL

 On June 21st, the NHL will be holding their yearly awards show in Las Vegas. (Or is it now just Vegas?) Every year we debate and yell at each other about who will win what. Then the awards actually happen and before they give out the Lady Byng, you’ve turned it to a marathon of Family Guy. 

For the Capitals, we have only one man to root for. Braden Holtby will be looking to win his second Vezina award. He is up against Carey Price and Sergei Bobrovsky. Holtby is looking to be the first netminder to win back to back since Martin Brodeur in the 06-07 and 07-08. Both Carey Price and Sergei Bobrovsky have won the award previously.

Generally the awards are boring. The music acts aren’t that great, the celebrities seem to not want to be there, and the host always pronounces a Russian player’s name wrong (I’m looking at you Jon Hang). How do you fix the awards show? There isn’t much that can be done, but one thing that I can think of is adding new awards. I came up with a couple that the NHL should really consider.

The Milbury: Named after noted blow hard, NBCSNs crotchety old man, Mike Milbury, this award goes to the most annoying, useless player in the NHL.

The Jagr: This award goes to the best player over 40 years old. It’s aptly named after Jaromir Jagr, who put up 16 goals while also being a card-carrying member of AARP.

The Subban: Named after PK Subban, who has the best style in the game, this award goes to the league’s best-dressed player.

The Semin: goes to the player who commits the most stick penalties that season. Named after former Capital Alex Semin because he would always take dumb stick penalties, especially in the offensive zone. I mean come on man.

The Tavares: This award goes to the best player who is in a bad situation and really needs to go to another team if he wants any hope of winning. It’s named after John Tavares who is stuck on the Islanders and that’s depressing.

The Trump: this one is tricky. It goes to the player that didn’t get the most votes for the award, but instead it goes to the player that won the most points because of a convoluted process in the voting system.

I think these awards will get people debating even more than before. People will tune in to see who is voted ‘most annoying’. The arguments about who will win the Tavares will be the stuff that ends friendships. Will the NHL adopt these new awards? Of course not. If they won’t change the off sides rule or make the nets bigger, they won’t add these beautiful, not haphazardly thrown together, trophies to their awards show. But I’m an optimist, so I won’t give up hope just yet. Tune into the NHL Awards show June 21st. Check your local cable provider for time and channel.

By Doug Lorman