Auston Matthews Robbed of Yet Another NHL Award
Auston Matthews just scored 69 goals, while providing elite-level defense for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
In any year, that is enough for Auston Matthews to win the NHL's award for Most Valuable Player - the Hart Trophy. Matthews himself won it two years ago with a worse season.
This year, the writers didn't feel like Matthews deserved another one, seemingly deciding that it was Nathan MacKinnon's "Turn." (Though we don't even know for sure who won yet, I feel this is a pretty safe assumption).
Considering that Matthews scores more than anyone, and has the highest percentage of primarly points out of his total, and was the only candidate known for his two-way game, it seems like a slam-dunk that he should win, but he didn't.
That's fine, the award is subjective and we at least know better in our hearts. What's crazy though, is that the Leafs best player had arguably the best season any player has had in the NHL since the mid-90s and was voted 4th.
Maybe if he was voted 2nd we could excuse it, but by voting him 4th the PHWA looks incompetent.
Auston Matthews Robbed of Yet Another NHL Award
Last week no one was surprised when the award for best defenive forward went to Alex Barkov. Barkov is generally considered the best defender in the league out of the first line players who also score points.
Obviously the best defensive forward in the NHL is not a first-line player, but like most NHL awards it's an award for the thing it says it is out of the players who score the most.
Which is why it's kind of weird Matthews didn't win it. He's not as good as Barkov defensively, but he scored 69 goals while being good enough defensively for people to remark on it. Givin how the awards tend to work, an argument can be made that he was robbed.
Same thing goes for the Lady Byng, which was announced today and which he was once again not the winner of.
This year's Lady Byng winner is Jaccob Slavin of the Carolina Hurricanes. He was a top-pairing defender who had only eight minutes in penalties, so that's pretty great.
But Matthews scored 69 goals and played elite defense and took only 20 PIMS. Consider how much more abuse a 70 goal scorer takes than a defenseman - then consider that Matthews didn't have a single fight or meltdown. The guys' sportsman ship is impeccable since he takes about 32 cross-checks to the spine per game.
There is no clear-cut winner here, but considering that Matthews was voted 4th in the Hart, it's fair to be extremely skeptical about all these awards.
It seems clear to me that given any other reasonable option, a writer outside of Toronto will vote for anyone else. The NHL is a pretty ridiculous league at the best of times, but goals are the most important stat that there is, and the guy who just scored the most goals in 30 years while playing elite defense didn't win a single award from the writers? Are we sure they were HOCKEY writers? The polls didn't accidently get sent out to like the people who put together Archeology Today or something?
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The only thing more humiliating to the PHWA would be if Matthews gets the Ted Lindsay award from his peers.