Other Awards
The Toronto Maple Leads only have one coach and one goalie, so team versions of the Jack Adams and Vezina are pretty pointless, but here are their other awards:
Selke – the best defensive player on the Leafs this year is Tavares. He gets it done against top competition every night, and other teams rarely score when he’s on the ice.
Biggest Surprise – Travis Dermott’s development. Dermott has been arguably the best third pairing defenseman in the NHL, the team struggled when he went down, and he is a legitimate top-four defenseman.
Plus, he can play the right side, so he’s versatile.
Biggest Disappointment – Mike Babcock. His lack of experimentation, his inability to fix the power play (or to pass the buck on the topic to his assistant), and his insistence on overplaying Brown, Marleau and Hainsey makes him a good candidate for worst coach of the year.
People may have unfair expectations of Babcock because of his reputation, but he hasn’t even lived up to half of them. Stacking his power play and then changing it halfway through is crazy. And why are the top three centres on the team on the same unit?
Auston Matthews doesn’t play enough, and he and Tavares should both be killing penalties. Also, Matthews has over 50 blocked shots when he should have zero. Other than that, I guess he’s fine.
This concludes your Toronto Maple Leafs end of the year awards.