Cole Caufield Nominated For Lady Byng Trophy

Of the three nominees, Caufield is the player with the most penalty minutes during the 2025-26 regular season with 14, followed by Kopitar’s 10 minutes and Sanderson having the least with just 8. With that being said, Caufield is probably not the likely winner of the Lady Byng; however, if the voters do take into account his pure production on the season, that could help his case, given that 14 minutes is still a very low amount of penalty minutes. When looking at his production, Caufield’s 51 goals and 89 points on the season blow both Kopitar and Sanderson out of the water, while only having 4 and 6 more penalty minutes than those two players.

At the same time, looking at the fact that Kopitar is retiring and is a 3-time winner of the award, the writers who vote on this award may want to give one of the most gentlemanly players over the past two decades one last farewell gift by awarding him the Lady Byng Trophy. Although, if we were to go based on penalty minutes alone, then Sanderson would be the guy to get the edge, but it will really depend on how the voters see it, and there can be an argument for all three players capturing the Lady Byng Trophy, meaning the final results could go either way.

While Caufield has been pretty consistently putting up low amounts of penalty minutes, this year is the first time he was named a nominee for the Lady Byng. Even if he doesn’t end up winning this year, given how he is a player that puts up very solid numbers, there is a good chance that he will have what it takes to win the Lady Byng at some point during his NHL career.

If Caufield does win the Lady Byng, he will be just the 3rd Habs player (Toe Blake in 1946 and Mats Näslund in 1988) since it was first introduced for the 1924-25 season by Lady Byng, who was the wife of Canada’s Governor General at the time. Her goal was to award the most gentlemanly player for their dedication and skill in the game without taking a ton of penalty minutes. Despite Jean Beliveau often being referred to as one of the most gentlemanly players, he never finished in the top 3 in voting for the award. The closest he came was 4th in the 1954-55 campaign.

Surprisingly last season, captain Nick Suzuki had just 8 penalty minutes but finished 5th in voting for the Lady Byng, as Kopitar and Brayden Point had fewer penalty minutes, while voters gave Jack Eichel the edge for 3rd place despite both players finishing tied. Meanwhile, this season, all the nominees have at least 8 penalty minutes, showing that this year, players have been taking a lot more penalty minutes.

In the end, Caufield finished with the 2nd least penalty minutes among Habs players who played a minimum of 40 games, as Alex Newhook was the only player to reach that criteria with fewer. Newhook finished 10 penalty minutes in 42 games, but if it were pro-rated to 82 games, Newhook would have finished with 18. Therefore, while also having an incredible season by becoming the Habs’ first 50-goal scorer in 36 years, Caufield was also the most disciplined Habs player overall.

Where do you think Caufield finishes in the Lady Byng voting?