The 2019 NHL Awards, By SBN and Canes Country

Later tonight, the NHL will honor the best of the 2018-19 season at the annual NHL Awards in Las Vegas. Every year, members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association select their top five for a handful of awards, then the votes are weighted and tallied to decide who wins each award. Like most fans, those of us at SBN Hockey have opinions on who should win. And like most fans, very few of us — and none of the CC writers — are members of the PHWA, so we don’t get a say in the process.

So, this year, we did the next best thing: we voted for the awards ourselves.

Thanks to Taylor Baird, the managing editor of Defending Big D, who compiled the votes for all of the SBN blogs. The winners for each award are in the images below, and below that are how the CC staff that participated in voting submitted their ballots. The SBN awards did not include the Vezina or Jack Adams trophies, because those are not voted on by the PHWA, but in the interest of completeness (and, uh, certainly not at all because the Hurricanes have a front-runner for a Jack Adams nod) we tallied our own ballots for those awards.

Here goes!

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SBN Top Five

1. Nikita Kucherov, Tampa Bay Lightning: 428 points (36 first-place votes)
2. Connor McDavid, Edmonton Oilers: 237 (8)
3. Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh Penguins: 188 (2)
4. Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado Avalanche: 146 (2)
5. Patrick Kane, Chicago Blackhawks: 58

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SBN Top Five

1. Mark Giordano, Calgary Flames: 374 points (26 first-place votes)
2. Brent Burns, San Jose Sharks: 198 (7)
3. Victor Hedman, Tampa Bay Lightning: 177 (5)
4. John Carlson, Washington Capitals: 111 (2)
5. Morgan Rielly, Toronto Maple Leafs: 111 (1)

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SBN Top Five

1. Elias Pettersson, Vancouver Canucks: 463 points (39 first-place votes)
2. Rasmus Dahlin, Buffalo Sabres: 226 (3)
3. Jordan Binnington, St. Louis Blues: 215 (5)
4. Miro Heiskanen, Dallas Stars: 197 (3)
5. Brady Tkachuk, Ottawa Senators: 94

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SBN Top Five

1. Mark Stone, Vegas Golden Knights: 355 points (24 first-place votes)
2. Ryan O’Reilly, St. Louis Blues: 254 (9)
3. Patrice Bergeron, Boston Bruins: 208 (7)
4. Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh Penguins: 149 (3)
5. Aleksander Barkov, Florida Panthers: 58 (1)

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SBN Top Five

1. Aleksander Barkov, Florida Panthers: 328 points (26 first-place votes)
2. Sean Monahan, Calgary Flames: 191 (4)
3. Ryan O’Reilly, St. Louis Blues: 175(4)
4. Samuel Girard, Colorado Avalanche: 63 (1)
5. Matt Duchene, Columbus Blue Jackets: 48 (2)

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SBN Top Five

1. Robin Lehner, New York Islanders: 395 points (34 first-place votes)
2. Joe Thornton, San Jose Sharks: 170 (5)
3. Nick Foligno, Columbus Blue Jackets: 168 (3)
4. Patrick Eaves, Anaheim Ducks: 84 (3)
5. Corey Crawford, Chicago Blackhawks: 71 (1)

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Non-PHWA Awards (voted on by CC Staff)

Vezina Trophy - Top Goaltender

1. Ben Bishop, Dallas Stars: 52 points (4 first-place votes)
2. Andrei Vasilevskiy, Tampa Bay Lightning: 48 (2)
3. Robin Lehner, New York Islanders: 26
4. John Gibson, Anaheim Ducks: 9
5. Sergei Bobrovsky, Columbus Blue Jackets: 7
6. Jordan Binnington, St. Louis Blues: 6
7. Pekka Rinne, Nashville Predators: 4
8. Darcy Kuemper, Arizona Coyotes: 3
9. Marc-Andre Fleury, Vegas Golden Knights: 1

Jack Adams Trophy - Coach of the Year

1. Jon Cooper, Tampa Bay Lightning: 52 points (4 first-place votes)
2. Barry Trotz, New York Islanders: 39 (1)
3. Rod Brind’Amour, Carolina Hurricanes: 32 (1)
4. Craig Berube, St. Louis Blues: 16
5. (tie) Bill Peters, Calgary Flames and Bruce Cassidy, Boston Bruins: 6
6. Todd Reirden, Washington Capitals: 3
7. (tie) Peter DeBoer, San Jose Sharks and Jim Montgomery, Dallas Stars: 1

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We didn’t tally votes for the GM of the Year award - because the entire PHWA doesn’t vote on it, and frankly I forgot to ask the CC staff for their votes - and for the Mark Messier Leadership Award - which, despite the fact that Justin Williams should be a shoo-in to win this year, is a ridiculous award in the first place. Also, none of us is Mark Messier.

How would your ballots have looked? We’d love to see them in the comments!