a bit of MVP trivia

[scoop 3,432]

I'm doing some awards research for a media spot I'm going to write, and here are some things that probably won't make the cut regarding players who have won multiple MVP awards.

 

-15 players have won at least two MVP trophies

-5 players have won three MVP trophies

-5 players have been MVP with multiple teams

 

Of the fifteen players, 12 of them had their first MVP trophy no later than their fifth season in the league. The three outliers are Grimm Jonsson, Tuomas Tukio, and Taro Tsujimoto. Jonsson spent the first five seasons of his career only picking up Top Leader Trophies as far as individual awards are concerned, then he won MVP three straight times to close out his career. Likewise, Tukio ended his career with back-to-back MVPs after having no individual awards in the seasons prior. Tsujimoto won his two MVP trophies in his sixth and eighth seasons. These were the only two awards (including team awards) he ever won.

 

Five of the 15 multi-MVP winners (including two of the three-time winners) were drafted in the first ten seasons. That means that over the course of the first 17 VHL seasons, there were only ten unique winners. The next 20 drafts did not produce a single player who won multiple times. If you were to look at a list of the MVPs from S17 (Jonsson's last MVP) to S37 (Tukio's first), you would see 21 unique names. This is easily the longest stretch of unique winners.

 

Grimm Jonsson (S15-S17) and Thomas O'Malley (S44-S46) are the only two players to win three consecutive MVP trophies

 

Grimm Jonsson and Franchise Cornerstone are the only two players to win three MVP trophies with the same team.

 

Gabriel McAllister is the only player to win MVP with a team, then a different team, and then again with that first team.

[scoop 3,432]

@Gustav I can't imagine there's a more unique trophy cabinet than that of Taro Tsujimoto. Two MVPs and literally nothing else, team or individual.

 

wtf

[Gustav 6,420]

10 minutes ago, scoop said:

@Gustav I can't imagine there's a more unique trophy cabinet than that of Taro Tsujimoto. Two MVPs and literally nothing else, team or individual.

 

wtf

 

Yeah, the discussion those seasons (more than any others for some reason) focused on the share of a team's offense generated by that one player. I didn't say anything for either (and voted against myself in both because potential conflict of interest) but I can't complain about how things worked out.

 

I wrote this article in S80 more or less wondering if it was the right choice. I think S82 was justified though.

 

Oh, and as far as I'm aware Taro never even led the league in any category. I might have scraped top 3 in one thing or another once or twice, but that's as far up as I got. IMO Taro deserves to be remembered much more as the face of Davos than that of the league in his time.

[Arce 755]

S12 and S13

[scoop 3,432]

20 hours ago, Arce said:

S12 and S13

14th overall is the latest any of the two-time MVP's were picked in their VHL draft. This is extra impressive (and also extra damning for the GM's at the time) because the drafts were not as deep as they are nowadays. Other than the two most recent players to join the two-time MVP club (Andrew Su, drafted 13th overall in S72; and Tsujimoto, drafted 9th overall in S75), every single one of them was a top three selection (or was not drafted due to the GM Rule of the past).

[Gustav 6,420]

1 minute ago, scoop said:

14th overall is the latest any of the two-time MVP's were picked in their VHL draft. This is extra impressive (and also extra damning for the GM's at the time) because the drafts were not as deep as they are nowadays. Other than the two most recent players to join the two-time MVP club (Andrew Su, drafted 13th overall in S72; and Tsujimoto, drafted 9th overall in S75), every single one of them was a top three selection (or was not drafted due to the GM Rule of the past).

 

Really just other than Su because Taro went later due to a different GM rule. I actually could have (and would have) picked him at the end of the 1st had I not been at work on draft day and been able to see a trade request, but I got home after the draft had started and Taro had already gone at 9.

[scoop 3,432]

@Arce I'm doing some looking into Hall of Fame history, specifically putting together a spreadsheet with the team every Hall of Famer was on during each season of their VHL career, and I completely forgot Bentz was on that S13 Davos team. We had five future Hall of Famers together that season, and Leingod was on the Hall of Fame ballot at one point, for some reason.

 

It's not the most Hall of Famers that have ever been on a team at the same point in time, though. Seattle (no surprise) had six in each of S4 through S6, though they weren't all the same players together that time. In S6, they actually had a total of seven future Hall of Famers on their roster, but one of them was traded away at the beginning of the season, and another was acquired at the deadline.

 

The Hall of Fame trio of Arce/Jenskovic/Devereux spent five seasons together, which could be the longest any Hall of Fame trios have spent together (would be tied with Calgary's Labatte/Slobo/Boulet, but that's quite the company). I'm only through the first 22 HoF classes though, and that's just a quick scan, so maybe there's another trio who spent more time together. I am curious to find out if any two Hall of Famers spent all eight seasons of their career together. I know off the top of my head that Benjamin Glover and Daniel Braxton spent seven seasons together, and I would guess that there might be some other pairs that match that.

Edited July 23, 2022 by scoop