All in all, the NHL Awards event proved to be a good time on Wednesday.
The mob of fans surrounding the photo wall and the red carpet area before the broadcast was good-sized and filled with fans from all around the league. We chatted with a pair of gentlemen from Florida who were attending together—one wearing a Lightning jersey, the other carrying his Panthers jersey. Yes—an actual Florida Panthers fan, from Florida!
During the event, we were seated next to a couple from Nashville, proudly rockin' the Shea Weber apparel. They'd booked their trip back in January, when the Preds were in first place in the league, so they were pretty disappointed to see that Filip Forsberg ultimately missed the cut for a Calder nomination and that Peter Laviolette and Pekka Rinne were both losers in their category.
The couple weren't fair-weather hockey fans, either. When Scotty Bowman came on the big screen for a pre-recorded segment, the gentleman talked about his memories as a youngster of Scotty as head coach of the St. Louis Blues back in the '60s. He knew his stuff!
From the Canucks organization, Trevor Linden was on hand. So was the captain who followed him in the late '90s, though I won't mention his name in this space.
Trevor, the good citizen, presented the Foundation Award to Brent Burns for his contributions to the community.
This topic has come up before in this space—perhaps the Canucks are a little *too* heavy on the "good citizen" representation and could use a little more snarl in their lineup.
Click here for the full list of voting for the Lady Byng Trophy, awarded to the league's most gentlemanly player. Daniel Sedin finished just outside the finalist rankings, in fourth place, while Henrik was 14th and Radim Vrbata was 16th.
Interestingly, the only other team with three nominees was Calgary, whose entire top line of Jiri Hudler, Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau also received votes. Hudler took home the trophy—the first Czech ever to do so—and gave the speech of the night, talking about looking after Johnny Hockey here in Vegas.
Willie Desjardins
finished ninth in the voting for the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year. But he was only one point behind Mike Babcock and Jon Cooper, so that's actually pretty heady company.
I can't comment on last night's afterparties, but we're still waiting for the first trade of the offseason to be announced. Sounds like Jim Benning is also getting anxious to finish the task:
Trevor Linden has already travelled from Vegas to Florida.
He's talking a bit more generally about the team's immediate plans. Here are the key nuggets—pretty much in line with what we've been expecting.
While we wait for the action to begin, here's a look at the full 2015-16 schedule, finally released today:
The Canucks will open their regular season with three of their first four games on the road, all against Pacific Division rivals. The year kicks off with a home-and-home against those pesky Calgary Flames, then is followed up with a back-to-back in Southern California against the Ducks and Kings. Straight into the fire!
The draft kicks off on Friday at 4 p.m. PT, with live coverage in Canada on Sportsnet. Hopefully we'll have something juicy to dissect before that gets underway!
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