Why Was the Virkkunen Trophy Retired?

[JardyB10 4,834]

For those of you who are n00bz or otherwise unfamiliar, the Mikka Virkkunen Trophy was an award given to the league’s “most sportsmanlike player,” which is to say, it was typically given to players who performed well while keeping their PIMs low.

 

The award was always pretty controversial. As you may or may not know, STHS is a fickle mistress, so it was pretty random which players weren’t going to take penalties in a given season. Furthermore, people felt it would make more sense to make it more of a member award instead of this random PIM award. Presumably for these reasons, the award was retired THE MINUTE I LEFT THE WEBSITE, WOW.

 

Anyway, since my return, I’ve noticed the following things:

- We now have a member award for toppest dog in the form of the Elmebeck Trophy

- There is a fairly strong anti-PIM attitude within the league. So much so that several members hate Checking as a stat because it correlates with PIMs, so much so that I’ve seen calls to retire or at least rework the Boulet Trophy. (I personally feel retiring the Boulet Trophy because Checking = PIMs is fucking stupid, but that’s neither here nor there)

- This isn’t anything especially new, but there’s been complaints about lack of player build variety and useful attributes to update

 

Therefore, I propose we re-instate the MV Trophy. 
 

PIMs are indeed quite bad, so why not award players who don’t take them (instead of REMOVING otherwise legitimate defensive awards like Boulet and Wylde)? It might encourage non-checking players to invest at least SOME points into Discipline. It worked for The Terrible Trivium this season. 

 

Sure, the winner of this award will be whomever Simon favours, but guess what? THAT’S LITERALLY EVERY AWARD! Why did Toronto do so poorly before the Trade Deadline? Why did New York miss playoffs below Vancouver? How did Gunnar Odinsson get 40 more points than his teammate Muffbeav? Why did Odinsson get 40 more points than literally any other 800-900 TPA player? All awards have some unknown level of randomness to it, but it is what it is, so I don’t know why we’d draw the line at PIMs.

 

If the concern is that it will simply just go to the non-checking MVP candidates every season, we can give the Virkkunen Trophy stricter parameters. Maybe you need fewer than 10-25 PIMs to even be eligible to win it. 

 

#BringBackMikka #JusticeForTrivium

[Beaviss 4,949]

go away boomer 

/thread

[Gustav 6,097]

4 hours ago, JardyB10 said:

Sure, the winner of this award will be whomever Simon favours, but guess what? THAT’S LITERALLY EVERY AWARD!

 

And this is a BIG PROBLEM! /s

 

You may be interested in this article I wrote a while back showing a pretty clear correlation between CK rating and hits, and hits and penalty minutes, and therefore CK and PIM. I'm not necessarily against having a "sportsmanlike" award, but I guess we'd just have quite a few questions coming up about what that means. Would we give it to someone with a good HIT/PIM ratio in general? Someone who hits a lot but has a good ratio? Someone who doesn't hit at all, regardless of ratio? Someone who doesn't hit at all and has a good ratio? Even if there were clear guidelines one way or another we'd have people disagreeing about what the guidelines should be, and those guidelines don't even exist to begin with. I feel like this would be more trouble than it's worth but if a clear solution exists I'm open to hearing it.

[Victor 10,534]

You're just nostalgic for S18-S19 Calgary.

 

I propose we name all awards after players from that team.

[JardyB10 4,834]

46 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

 

And this is a BIG PROBLEM! /s

 

You may be interested in this article I wrote a while back showing a pretty clear correlation between CK rating and hits, and hits and penalty minutes, and therefore CK and PIM. I'm not necessarily against having a "sportsmanlike" award, but I guess we'd just have quite a few questions coming up about what that means. Would we give it to someone with a good HIT/PIM ratio in general? Someone who hits a lot but has a good ratio? Someone who doesn't hit at all, regardless of ratio? Someone who doesn't hit at all and has a good ratio? Even if there were clear guidelines one way or another we'd have people disagreeing about what the guidelines should be, and those guidelines don't even exist to begin with. I feel like this would be more trouble than it's worth but if a clear solution exists I'm open to hearing it.

No we’d just give it to someone with a good all-around performance/PIM ratio, which frankly would almost always just be Points and maybe SB, given the correlation between Hits and PIMs.

This isn’t intended to be a checking award at all, as that’s more or less what the Boulet Trophy already is. Ideally this is “MVP who didn’t take penalties.”

[mattyIceman 1,037]

Justice for @der meister

[BOOM 8,408]

On 9/8/2021 at 1:08 AM, JardyB10 said:

How did Gunnar Odinsson get 40 more points than his teammate Muffbeav? Why did Odinsson get 40 more points than literally any other 800-900 TPA player?

 

Because I finally learned how to hockey you fool.

[Shindigs 1,771]

I mean the NHL can't figure out what the Lady Byng is supposed to be for either. Usually it's just the "This guy probably coulda won the Hart, but didn't"-Award

[Phil 5,014]

Maybe if they do that I'll build another Phil Rafter-type player! I will fight alongside you with your suggestion @JardyB10

[animal74 1,606]

I don't mind bringing this award back at all! Most Gentlemanly isn't necessarily least PIM but could also consider 5-minute majors, all-around ability and locker room/forum interactions just to mix it up a bit. Maybe each team could nominate one player and the BOD could get the short list from those nominations. I'm with you @JardyB10

[fonziGG 1,065]

@LefLop and his 4 PIMs licking his lips