Some quick thoughts on the S64 awards

[Enorama 1,980]

First off, congrats to @DilIsPickle because the awards show presentation went really well. Also, congrats to all the winners, and no matter how I might frame my following thoughts, I don't intend to cheapen or de-legitimize anyone's award win. Now, on to the hot takes (some may just be luke-warm)

 

1. MVP to Cast: let's kick this one off with a doozy. Cast is a great player, we all know that, and without him, Riga's 1C would be Pajari, which makes him an extremely valuable player to their roster this season. However, nothing about his performance tells me that he carried the team to greater heights. If you take Cast off the roster, I think Riga still would have been solidly in the playoffs. Same with Malenko and Thompson, honestly, so I don't think they'd be entirely deserving of the MVP either. You all know where I'm going with this. Without Stopko, Toronto is a basement team this year. I would have projected them to miss the playoffs or be trounced in the WC round if it weren't for their star goaltender. Instead, Stopko carried the team to a solid playoff berth this season, wherein they often competed with the top two teams for seeding. 

 

2. DDotY to Kovalchuk: I'll keep this one rather short by saying that Kovalchuk had not even entered my mind for consideration on any individual trophy this year. I was astounded to see his name as a finalist for anything and even more astounded to find that he'd stolen this right out from under McWolf's nose.

 

3. DotY to McWolf: this feels like one of those makeup calls refs make when they realize they made a chincy call earlier in the game. McWolf clearly deserved DDotY, so when he didn't get it, he was instead handed the DotY instead. Offensively, Malenko was head and shoulders above every other defenseman in the league in S64. It wasn't even close enough to have the gap covered by any sort of defensive prowess on anyone else's part.

 

Those are the only misses that stand out to me personally, make sure to let me know what you all think too in the comments.

 

364 words.

[Exlaxchronicles 415]

Ive been saying this since midway through my players career.... Its a popularity contest with politics thrown in.

[Bushito 1,945]

I've never seen anything in this league that was such a glaring popularity driven gifted awards in my life

[BOOM 8,433]

They need me on the committee. I have no friends, so no bias. Vote BOOM, you know it makes sense. 

[Victor 10,561]

I struggle to think of a time when I disagreed with a post more lol.

 

The Stopko for MVP argument follows the eternally flawed logic that when you remove a player from the team they are gone without replacement. By that logic, a goalie is always MVP as most teams have CPUs if you "take them off the team". If Toronto didn't have Stopko they'd have Carison and still finish fifth. Stopko didn't do much more in the regular season than Ironside and Arroyo to slightly shift Toronto above Quebec otherwise they performed exactly as expected. Which is true for every team in the regular season - everyone basically performed as expected so you have to look at the contribution of the best player compared to the next best player and that gave Cast the edge over any other forward.

 

In regards to defence men, I came into the discussion fully expecting to vote McWolf for most defensive and best overall. Only saw Kovalchuk on the ballot then which changed the Wylde for me and everyone else. Kovalchuk put up similar stats to McWolf on a much better team - I.e. they were not inflated by playing on a worse team. McWolf still had a solid all around game unlike Malenko who was very much a beneficiary of a high scoring Seattle.

[Beketov 8,653]

Honestly if I had a vote for MVP, which I didn’t, I would have gone with Arroyo or Ironside probably. Arguably everyone on the ballot had help (Thompson had Malenko, Cast had Edwin, Arroyo and Ironside had each other) aside from Stopko but @Victor is right that in the regular season I don’t think Stopko made or broke Toronto. I think Arroyo and Ironside did; arguably moreso than Thompson, Malenko, Cast, or Edwin.

 

That’s how I was expecting things to go anyway. The split of the votes is more of a surprise to me than anything else.