NHL Year End Awards
The debate is on! As I first heard on Saturday’s broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada the NHL is considering renaming hockey’s year-end award trophies. While both sides of the debate present their cases, I for one am in favour of the initiative to brand hockey’s “best of” awards after the great players that have come before them. After all does anyone know the history behind why the NHL’s best player is awarded the Hart trophy (for the league’s best player) or who Lady Byng was (awarded to the league’s most sportsmanlike player)?
Does it not make sense for the leagues best player to receive the ‘Wayne Gretzky’ award and the most sportsmanlike to go to a number of players, perhaps Steve Yzerman or Joe Sakic? In any event I think the NHL is on the right track with this one, time will tell!
Why change them? The trophy names are currently unique and classy, the Hart, the Pearson, the Lady Byng, the Norris, the Veizna. There are no better collections of trophies in sports with more history than these. I say let the new fans embrace the history rather than to change it to accomodate those who don't know. The lay hockey fan will be as unfamiliar with Joe Sakic as the trophy names.
What are you nuts? Should we change the name of the Stanley Cup too? I think the NHL needs to cling to whatever traditions it can. Sure, the game has changed and the players are higher profile than ever before. Sure, the original six is now a watered-down thirty. I would never want to be so backward thinking as to criticize growth or keeping up with modern times but I think there are things you just don't mess with. I couldn't imagine watching the Leafs and the Canadiens battling it out for the Bettman Cup.
Mind you having said that, I don't call my Taylor Made Rescue club a niblick. Ward