If not for Edmonton’s Connor McDavid , the slam-dunk MVP winner, a case could be made for Ullmark to add the Hart to his haul. The most recent goaltender to win it was Carey Price in 2015, preceded by fellow Canadien Jose Theodore (2002).
Voting for NHL awards closes this weekend, and the Bruins are assured a substantial share of the hardware, including Linus Ullmark as the top goalie (Vezina), Patrice Bergeron yet again as the premier defensive forward (Selke), and Jim Montgomery as coach of the year (Adams).
Ullmark finished with league-high marks in all three major categories: wins (40), save percentage (.938), and goals-against average (1.89) — goaltending’s Triple Crown. From start to finish, it was a performance reminiscent of the legendary Dominik Hasek, whose bounty during his Buffalo heyday included six Vezinas and two Harts.
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The Dominator only once cracked the 40-win plateau, but not until he left Buffalo for Detroit. His top save percentage was .937, and his best GAA 1.87.
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“Flattering to hear,” Ullmark said late in the season, when a reporter noted his performance had become worthy of Hart consideration. “But it’s McDavid.”
Montgomery, after noting Ullmark’s accomplishments, easily agreed.
“It’s Connor McDavid’s world right now,” said the Bruins coach.
McDavid, 26, set career highs in goals (64), assists (89), and points (153), production so dominant that the name of teammate Leon Draisaitl (52-76–128) barely gets mentioned even as the Hart runner-up. That’s some long shadow.
Bergeron, who last year won the Selke for a record fifth time, deserves it again on merit alone. The widely-held assumption that he’ll retire after the season only will enhance his chances. Runner-up: fellow oldster Jordan Staal in Carolina.
Erik Karlsson looks likely to claim his third Norris Trophy. Godofredo A. Vásquez/Associated Press
Rounding out the trophy case:
Norris Trophy (best defenseman): No doubt the best debate of all the hardware again this year. It most likely will go to San Jose’s Erik Karlsson, the first blue liner to crack 100 points (25-76–101) since the Rangers’ Brian Leetch (102 points in 1991-92).
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Karlsson, as we saw often in his prime Ottawa days, is a sublime talent, smooth afoot and with stick. The fact he posted 101 points on a weak roster only adds to the accomplishment. But the 32-year-old Swede is not the horse we think of when defining best defenseman as, you know, the guy best taking care of business in the back half of the ice.
Ray Bourque (five Norris wins in his years in Boston) defined that standard, and threw in 1,579 career points. The closest in today’s game is Tampa Bay’s Victor Hedman. But with a down year (49 points), he won’t get a sniff. Because, you know, it’s about the points.
Calder Trophy (top rookie): Easy to make the hometown case for Hingham’s Matty Beniers, who led rookies in scoring (24-33–57) with the Kraken. He should win it.
If not the 20-year-old Beniers, then it has to be Oilers netminder Stuart Skinner, who initially factored as Jack Campbell’s understudy and then flat out took over the job, posting a line of 29-14-5, 2.75, .914.
Lady Byng (most gentlemanly): Absolutely, positively ridiculous that Bergeron has never won it. I will entertain no other candidates. In the words of Dave Goucher, Bergeron! Bergeron! Bergeron! He’s as much Byng as he is Selke. Totaled 22 penalty minutes this season and still the biggest faceoff winner (1,043) in the game, with, you know, another centerman constantly in his face.
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Adams (top coach): Montgomery’s team finished with the most wins (65) and points (135) in league history, and wrapped up the job by going 15-1-0 over the last four weeks.
Some valid competition, including two ex-Bruins coaches (Bruce Cassidy/Vegas and Rick Bowness/Winnipeg). But like his team, “Monty” rewrote the record book with an overall job performance that glowed brighter than his Telly Savalas haircut. Only right that he’s handed the award with a lollipop, too.
ON THE OUTS
End of an era for Penguins?
Pittsburgh Penguins’ Sidney Crosby acknowledges Penguins fans during a tribute celebrating his 1500th NHL point scored against the Detroit Red Wings, Saturday in Detroit, during the first period of an NHL hockey game iagainst the Chicago Blackhawks in Pittsburgh, Tuesday, April 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar) Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press
Tough times, home and away, for the Fenway Sports Group enterprise.
The once-proud MLB franchise doing business along the street formerly known as Yawkey Way looks even worse than most expected. And now, the FSG Penguins, stung with that 2-1 loss at the Fens in the Jan. 2 Winter Classic, have missed the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since franchise center Sidney Crosby’s rookie season with the flightless birds in 2005-06.
Reality delivered a brutal punch Friday when the Penguins cleared out the front office, firing general manager Ron Hextall and his top aide, Chris Pryor, along with Brian Burke, president of hockey ops and a former Cup winner in his days as Anaheim GM.
The Penguins’ streak of 16 playoff seasons came to an end with Crosby having played in 180 postseason games (71-130–201) and his name on the Cup three times. His own stretch of playoff seasons was interrupted in 2011 because of a midseason concussion that left him on the sidelines for a Round 1 loss to the Lightning.
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The Penguins’ knockout blow officially came on Wednesday, when the Islanders filched the East’s last available berth by picking up a 4-2 win at the Bell Centre drive-by window.
The kill shot, though, came 24 hours earlier, the Penguins embarrassingly rolled on home ice, 5-2, by a sad-sack Blackhawks squad that had every reason to mail it in and improve odds in the upcoming (May 8) Connor Bedard lottery.
Much time has been spent here, justifiably, scrutinizing how critical “misses” in Round 1 of the 2015 draft retarded the Bruins’ developmental growth — the lost opportunities including Mathew Barzal (Islanders), Kyle Connor (Jets), Thomas Chabot (Senators), Brock Boeser (Canucks), and others.
The Penguins, with only one pick in the top 20 since 2012, aren’t on the hook for that number of high-end misfires, but their talent pipeline in recent years has not helped relieve pressure on an aged talent core consisting of graybeards Evgeni Malkin (36), Kris Letang (35), and Sid the Kid (35).
This nugget from NHL.com senior scribe Dan Rosen: The Penguins’ 36 draft picks since 2016 have logged all of 13 NHL games.
Add that to the fact that Hextall’s deadline acquisitions (Mikael Granlund, Dmitri Kulikov, Nick Bonino) provided zilch in production.
FSG’s John Henry and Tom Werner co-authored the standard farewell release, thanking the front office trio for their service and expressing their disappointment in the season.
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Hextall and Burke took over two years ago, shortly before FSG purchased the club from Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle. The FSG ownership group now is in the hunt for new rainmakers. Maybe that leads it to look just a few miles down Storrow Drive for someone in the Bruins front office.
ETC.
Best place for Bedard?
Connor Bedard looks like a superstar in the making, but where will he start his NHL career? DARRYL DYCK/Associated Press
Connor Bedard, the presumptive No. 1 pick in June and touted as a generational talent along the order of Sidney Crosby, Vincent Lecavalier, and even Connor McDavid, saw his junior career come to a close Monday in Regina’s Round 1 loss to Saskatoon in the WHL playoffs.
How about this for Bedard’s seven-game playoff line: 10-10–20? The speedy, skilled pivot rolled up 143 points in 57 regular-season games with the Pats.
Your faithful puck chronicler sees a lot of Patrick Kane in Bedard’s game. Different position (Kane a left shot on right wing) but near identical in size and each devilishly slippery with speed and sleight-of-hand trickery.
Kane, the No. 1 pick in 2007, had the great fortune of joining a Blackhawks team that already had Jonathan Toews (No. 3 pick in 2006) in place as its budding franchise center. By the spring of 2015, both were prime 20-somethings and three-time Cup champs — an era that now seems long ago amid the franchise’s ongoing buffoonery.
Now the question is, what fit and future awaits Bedard with whatever bottom-feeder he’ll be charged to resuscitate? The four with the best odds to land him: Columbus, Anaheim, Chicago, and San Jose.
The Blackhawks, with Kane now a Blueshirt and Toews not to return, would be the most challenged of the bunch. It could be painful there for Bedard for years.
The Blue Jackets have intriguing fits at wing in Johnny Gaudreau and Patrik Laine. Booner Jenner would be the standing No. 1 pivot.
The Ducks have the best in terms of young, exciting talent up front with Trevor Zegras and Troy Terry. They could all grow as a unit.
The Sharks have Logan Couture, 34, in place for another four years, ideally to provide solid guidance and mentoring. Ditto for Tomas Hertl, 29 and signed through 2029-30.
The guess here for the winning fit is: Ducks by a slight edge, because their netminding, with John Gibson, is the best of the bunch. No matter what Bedard’s fit is with available wingers, nothing moves forward without reliable goaltending.
Panthers can thank Lyon
Ex-Yale goalie Alex Lyon, the best thing to happen to the Panthers this season beyond Matthew Tkachuk, enters as perhaps the postseason’s No. 1 story line. He figures to be the starter for Game 1 Monday night vs. the Bruins.
As noted in this space last week, the Panthers, about to log a DNQ, were left with little choice but to hand Lyon the net gig amid No. 1 Sergei Bobrovsky’s mediocrity and the protracted absence of Spencer Knight in the Players’ Assistance Program.
Lyon opened unremarkably with a loss March 21 in Philadelphia, then rattled off six straight wins, rescuing the Sunrisers from an early sunset.
A 30-year-old journeyman from Baudette, Minn., Lyon signed as a free agent with the Flyers after three years at Yale. He spent last season (123 minutes of playing time) as Hurricanes property, then accepted GM Bill Zito’s one-year offer to sign with Florida for a $300,000 guarantee (cheap insurance against the combined cap hit of nearly $11 million).
Lyon once played on the Zito-managed Team USA entry at the World Championship. Zito, also ex- of Yale as a forward for Tim Taylor, was a longtime agent before joining Columbus as assistant GM under Jarmo Kekalainen. Acme Sports, the Zito-owned agency, represented Lyon for a year before Zito sold it upon joining the Blue Jackets.
“No, wait, we were together two years,” Zito relayed by text the other day, checking his memory following a Panthers workout. “Now the boys [at practice] are really making fun of us!”
Lyon, now a career 16-11-5, only has AHL playoff experience, but it was his 9-3-0 performance with the Chicago Wolves in last spring’s AHL playoffs that, in part, enticed Zito to sign him. If he has a weakness, it will be detected and exploited under the bright lights of Stanley Cup play.
‘Loser points’ made no difference
Of the 16 playoff teams, not one made it over the cut line because of the tabulation of loser points picked up in overtime or shootouts.
So, again, can we please stop the arithmetical nonsense?
It’s all about the wins and losses, as it should be, and not the foolish “going home with a point” that even some players find satisfying or honorable after getting tagged with a defeat beyond the game clock’s 60-minute mark.
There are some fans, be they casual or new to the vulcanized rubber world, who still have trouble following play, figuring the standings, or grasping the rules. To the latter point, even some of the paid help wearing black and white stripes on their sweaters often don’t get it.
So why make the game all the more complicated by adding the “loser point” factor into the standings that, in the end, amounts to a whole lot of nothing? It’s all an illusion bordering on an insult.
Record haul by the numbers
With a Czech contingent at the top, the Bruins are getting production from all corners of the globe these days. John Froschauer/Associated Press
Hardly qualifies as a revelation, but for those who might not have lived through the NHL’s evolution from a six-team all-Canadian brotherhood to today’s 32-team We-Are-The-World enterprise, we offer this Bruins goal-scoring comparison:
In their legendary season of 1970-71, with Phil Esposito (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario) leading the way with a league-record 76 goals, the Bruins piled up a then-league mark of 399 goals (surpassed only by the Oilers, five times in the 1980s).
Of those 399 goals, all but the 43 by Ken Hodge were potted by Canadian-born Bruins. Hodge, though born in Birmingham, England, was raised in Canada and was a graduate of the OHA’s St. Catharines Black Hawks.
Ivan Boldirev, of the Zrenjanin, Serbia, Boldirevs, was the only other player on the 1970-71 roster not born in Canada. Boldirev’s family emigrated to Esposito’s hometown some 20 years before he played his first NHL game. Unlike Hodge, Boldirev did not contribute a goal that season.
Fast forward to the Bruins of 2022-23, who set league records in wins (65) and points (135), though scoring with far less frequency (301 goals) than their forebears:
▪ Goal scorers on today’s Black and Gold roster were born in five countries: Canada (6), Czechia (6), Russia (1), Sweden (3), and the United States (10).
▪ Czechia, because of a certain right winger from Havirov, led the way with 110 goals, a touch better than the combined Esposito-Johnny McKenzie haul (107) in 1970-71. Next came Canada (100), the US (75), Sweden (12) and Russia (4). Good mix, but yo, Finland, you’re on the clock.
The breakdown, by country: Czechia (110) — David Pastrnak (61), Pavel Zacha (21), David Krejci (16), Tomas Nosek (7), Jakub Lauko (4), Jakub Zboril (1).
Canada (100) — Patrice Bergeron (27), Jake DeBrusk (27), Brad Marchand (21), Taylor Hall (16), A.J. Greer (5), Tyler Bertuzzi (4).
US (75) — Trent Frederic (17), Charlie Coyle (16), Nick Foligno (10), Charlie McAvoy (7), Connor Clifton (5), Derek Forbort (5), Garnet Hathaway (4), Matt Grzelcyk (4), Craig Smith (4), Brandon Carlo (3).
Sweden (12) — Hampus Lindholm (10), Oskar Steen (1), Linus Ullmark (1).
Russia (4) — Dmitry Orlov (4).
Loose pucks
DeBrusk, 26, on Thursday night played in his 385th regular-season game. His father, Louie, still in the game as a TV commentator, enjoyed a 401-game NHL career before packing it in at age 33. Jake should be able to boast veteran standing in the family as US Thanksgiving approaches next season. He claimed the scoring title long ago but likely won’t challenge his dad’s 1,161 PIMs … Mario Lemieux’s line for his final playoff season with the QMJHL’s Laval Voisins: 29-23–52 in 14 games. Mario Magnifique opened his NHL career with a goal at the Garden (Pete Peeters in net, Ray Bourque chasing) that fall of 1984 … If you are working on your all-Bruins autograph book, Luc Dufour and Marco Baron, who briefly shared the club’s net 50/50 with Rogie Vachon, will appear at Sportsworld in Saugus on April 30, from noon until 2 p.m.
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.