2018-19 NHL awards preview

Since entering the NHL only two players in the NHL have more points than Connor McDavid ... and both of them have played at least 30 more games than him. His points per game average is by far the best, and over the past two years (when he has topped 100 points each season) no one is even close to him. If he is healthy, this award is his. Again. Only five players have ever won it three times and McDavid seems destined to join that group. 

While Sidney Crosby is still regarded as the better player (and he probably is!), Evgeni Malkin has been, by a slim margin, the more productive player offensively over the past few years. He finished fourth in the scoring race in 2017-18 and was third on a point-per-game level. Given that he tends to play with the better wingers in Pittsburgh (Phil Kessel specifically) do not rule him out in this race. 

He looked like he had it won for most of last season until being overtaken by McDavid in the second half. McDavid is the only player in the NHL that has recorded more points than him over the past two years, and he is just now entering his age 25 season, typically a peak year for forwards. Like McDavid, he will be a front-runner for the scoring title and the MVP this season. 

Tavares has been a top-10 scorer in the NHL for the past few years despite not having much talent around him. Now he is going to be playing on a team, and on a power play, that has an embarrassment of riches at forward. There is going to be immense pressure on him to perform, and he will. Perhaps enough to win his first ever scoring title. 

He has been close in the past but never quite been able to crack the top-three. But he is still playing on an outstanding line in Dallas, he is still one of the most talented players in the league, and I want to see what he does in a new system with a fresh voice and approach behind the bench that isn't one of the veteran retread coaches the Stars have trotted out there for the past few years. He has the talent to lead the league in scoring, and I still think he will at some point in his career. Maybe even this season. 

McDavid enters the season as the odds on favorite to win the Hart Trophy this season and should be considered the favorite to win a third consecutive scoring title. The only thing that might hold him back in the MVP race is if the Oilers are lousy again. With a better team around him and more wins in the standings he may have run away with it a year ago. 

Already a three-time MVP, Ovechkin probably deserved more love in the voting a year ago given that he was a league-leading goal-scorer on a team that won its division during the regular season (then went on to win the Stanley Cup in the playoffs). He is going to be the top player on one of the best teams in the league once again and will almost certainly factor into the discussion. 

He seemed to be one of the front-runners throughout the entire 2017-18 season but lost a little bit of steam down the stretch, ending up with a sixth-place finish in the voting. You have to like his chances though because he is going to be one of the league's elite point producers once again and doing so for a Stanley Cup contender. 

Perhaps a sleeper pick for the award this season. He has finished 7th and 11th in the voting over the past two years respectively, has turned into one of the game's best offensive players and is still one of the best two-way forwards in the league. He is no longer just a part of one of the NHL's best lines (alongside Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak), he is one of the driving forces behind it. 

He was a finalist for the first time in his career during the 2017-18 season thanks to an absolutely incredible season that saw him also take home the Selke Trophy as the league's best defensive forward. He has always been one of the NHL's best shutdown centers and then he matched that with a career-year offensively. If the Kings get back into the playoffs Kopitar is going to be one of the biggest reasons why and that will once again get him plenty of MVP votes. 

Hedman has become an absolute monster on the Lightning blue line, excelling in every single area that a defender can excel in. He scores at an elite level, he plays 25 minutes per night as a No. 1 defender against every team's best player, and he is as good defensively as any other player in the league. After finishing in third in the Norris voting two years ago, he came back a year ago and won it. He should be considered the favorite to do it again. 

He should be fully healthy, he is playing on a Stanley Cup contender surrounded by great talent, and he should be primed for a massive season as he plays for a new contract as a pending unrestricted free agent. Karlsson has already won the award twice (and been a finalist two other times) and is trying to join an elite club of defenders to have won it three times. 

Like Karlsson, Doughty is going to be a constant contender for the Norris Trophy as long as he is healthy. There is not a better defensive defenseman in hockey, and last year he saw a pretty significant jump in his offense with a career high 60 points. If he duplicates that offensive production his game and value is going to reach an entirely different level. 

Klingberg is the NHL's best defenseman that no one talks about. Well, maybe it's unfair to say "no one," but he does not get anywhere near enough attention for how good he is. He has always been a dominant offensive player, but his defensive game has improved dramatically over the past couple of years. He has two top-six finishes in the Norris Trophy voting in his career and may be ready to take the next big leap this season. 

Jones is starting the season a little banged up, but once he gets healthy he should once again be an impact player. He was tremendous for the Blue Jackets in 2017-18 and alongside Zach Werenski helped form one of the best defensive pairings in the league. That can make it a little difficult to separate their performance from one another, as both are legit top-pairing players that could make a case for the award, but Jones seems to have surpassed Werenski as the Blue Jackets' best all-around defender and one of the best in the league. 

Mittelstadt is one of the two Calder Trophy contenders on the Sabres this season, joining No. 1 overall pick Rasmus Dahlin. Following a dominant year at the University of Minnesota, he got a late season cup of coffee with the Sabres to close out the 2017-18 campaign and never looked out of place at the NHL level, recording a goal and four assists in six games. He is one of the reasons Sabres fans should have at least some hope for the future. 

This would be Buffalo's other  preseason contender for the award. Dahlin arrives in the NHL with more fanfare and hype than probably any defense prospect since Victor Hedman and could potentially be a transformative player for the Sabres franchise. With Eichel, Mittelstadt and Sam Reinhart up front they have some young impact forwards they can build around. They need a No. 1 defender, and this guy could be it. 

After having a Calder Trophy finalist a year ago in Brock Boeser, the Vancouver Canucks could have another one this season in Elias Pettersson, their top pick (No. 5 overall) from the 2017 class. After dominating in the Swedish league a year ago, Pettersson is ready to make the jump over to the NHL where the Canucks are hoping that he will become a cornerstone player in their rebuild. 

Following the trade of Jeff Skinner over the summer, the Carolina Hurricanes are going to need some of their young players to step in his absence to not only replace what they are losing in Skinner, but to also help improve an offense that has been one of the league's worst. At the top of that list will be No. 2 overall pick Andrei Svechnikov, the best pure goal-scorer in the 2018 class. He has superstar potential and that is exactly what the Hurricanes need him to become to complement their outstanding young defense. 

The Stars love Hesikanen so much they reportedly refused to make him available in a potential Erik Karlsson trade. The No. 3 overall pick in 2017, the 19-year-old Heiskanen was fantastic for his Finnish league team, finishing with 23 points in 30 games. Defensemen tend to have a hard time getting attention in the Calder Trophy voting, but even if he does not win it he has a chance to give Dallas what could be a dominant duo on defense for the next decade alongside John Klingberg. 

One of the best young goalies in the NHL, Vasilevskiy was outstanding for the Lightning in 2017-18 and finished the season as a finalist for the Vezina. Given the role he is likely to play on a contending team and the numbers he has the ability to put up he should once again be in the discussion this season. He finished this past season as the league leader in wins and shutouts while his .920 save percentage was well above the league average. 

Had he not missed so much time due to injury he probably would have been a finalist in 2017-18. Even with the injury he maybe should have been. For as much as Fleury has accomplished throughout his career he has never received many votes from the league's General Managers in the Vezina voting, but if he repeats what he did this past season it would be hard for them to continue to ignore him. 

After winning the Vezina in 2015-16 and then finishing as the runner-up the next season, Holtby did not have his best individual season in 2017-18. All he did instead was help lead the Capitals to their first ever Stanley Cup championship. Expect him to bounce back individually during the regular season and get back to his Vezina Trophy level. He has been a .922 or better goalie in three of the past four seasons. This past season was the fluke. 

Price is kind of the wild card here. When he is healthy he is as good as you will find in the league and he can carry a team when he is at his best. He had an absolutely dreadful season for the Canadiens in 2017-18 but it almost feels like he has something to prove this year. If he bounces back he is the type of goalie that can lead a bad team to a surprising playoff berth, and that is the type of performance that gets a goalie a lot of hardware on award night. 

Bobrovsky has already won the award twice in his career and is trying to become just the 11th player in league history to win it three times. He is pretty much a lock to top a .920 save percentage every year and as a pending free agent is playing for a new contract this season, so he has even more motivation to shine. He has been one of the league's best goalies since arriving in Columbus seven years ago and has been everything the Blue Jackets could have hoped for him to be. The only thing he has to do now is solve his playoff issues. 

Laviolette has been a top-tier coach in the NHL for years and has taken three different teams to the Stanley Cup Final. That alone makes for an incredible resume. One thing he has never done? Win the Jack Adams Award. What might work against him is the fact his team is just too talented, which always seems to hurt the league's top coaches. It's almost like the only time we can acknowledge a great coaching job is when the roster isn't very impressive. 

Looking at the recent history of this award it almost always goes to a coach whose team exceeds expectations and makes the playoffs after missing them the year before (or several years before). Bob Boughner seems like a logical candidate to fit that criteria because after falling just a point shy of the playoffs a year ago and finishing the year strong the Panthers look like a great candidate to make the playoffs this season. 

Usually the coach that wins this award finds themselves out of a job within a year or two of winning it, but I'm going to say the reigning Jack Adams Award winner is going to experience a different path and is going to be a favorite to win it again. After taking an expansion team to the Stanley Cup Final in its first year the expectations are no doubt going to be ratcheted up in year two, but he is bringing back a really strong team that made some big additions in the offseason. 

Todd Reirden has some big shoes to fill in Washington. All Barry Trotz did during his time in Washington was win a pair of Presidents' Trophies as the NHL's best team during the regular season and then win a Stanley Cup. That creates a ton of pressure for the person coming in after him, especially when that new coach has no prior head coaching experience in the NHL. Still, Reirden has been one of the league's most sought after assistants in recent years and if the Capitals come close to repeating or have another great season it will be a great accomplishment for Reirden. 

Again going with the mindset of "new coach that gets previously bad team to the playoffs." Even though we say this about them every year, the Hurricanes should be a real sleeper team in the Eastern Conference this season because their defense is just absolutely loaded and they have a couple of really intriguing your forwards that might be difference-makers. With competent goaltending this could be a playoff team, and if they get in the playoffs you can bet Brind'Amour will be, at the very least, a finalist.