A look into Ryan Pike’s 2022-23 PHWA awards ballot

The 2022-23 season was my fifth as a member of the Professional Hockey Writers Association, and the second time I was selected as a voter in the annual awards. In the interest of transparency, our organization posts breakdowns of everybody’s votes for each award on the PHWA website, but (as was the case last year) I thought I would take the opportunity to walk everybody through my thought processes for each award.

Let’s dive in!

Presented annually “to the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.”

Unlike the remainder of the awards, which only about half of the PHWA votes on, all members can vote on the Masterton. Each of the NHL’s 32 chapters nominate a player, and then the full membership votes.

This is always a tough award to determine every year, because there are 32 deserving nominees. I opted to go with Letang, who’s battled some really tough personal challenges this past season, Belzile, who scored his first career NHL goal at age 31, and Stalock, who’s battled back from missing an entire season due to COVID complications (including myocarditis).

Presented annually “to the forward who best excels in the defensive aspects of the game.”

My emphasis with my voting in this award is somebody who played a lot against good players and excelled. So I looked at things like player usage charts, shot differentials and the like. Once again, Bergeron is the class of the league, but several other players had strong performances behind him.

I went back and forth on where to put Backlund. Fourth felt right.

Presented annually “to the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability.”

My voting for this award skews towards players that played a ton against good players, scored a lot… and didn’t take too many penalties. Hughes came out just ahead of Point for me.

Presented annually “to the player selected as the most proficient in his first year of competition.”

This was a no-doubter for me, with the only real question being which player would be third behind Beniers and Skinner. (And shout-out to Cates, who was sneaky good on a Flyers team that wasn’t amazing this season.) Wyatt Johnston just missed the cut for me for fifth place.

Presented annually “to the defense player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position.”

So here’s my thing: the Norris is for “greatest all-around ability.” Karlsson isn’t a great defensive blueliner, but he was so good at the offensive side of the game in 2022-23 that he lapped the field. But give some love to Lindholm and Dunn, who both had some really strong seasons.

Quinn Hughes just missed the cut for me, getting edged by Morrissey for the fifth spot. Adam Fox was also just off the board. It was a toss-up between those three for the last spot. Again: it’s all-around ability at the position, and unless you’re going crazy offensively like Karlsson did this season, you need to show all-around ability.

Presented annually “to the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team.”

Like with a bunch of these awards, the question was who’s behind the eventual winner. This one was fairly straight-forward, though. It’s a bit of a shame that Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins are on McDavid’s team, because how much credit can you get for being valuable when you’re on the same roster as him?

My All-Rookie choices mirrored my Calder votes, with the addition of Calen Addison on the blueline.

Reminder: the Hart Trophy is for “most valuable.” The All-Star votes are for “best” at each position. Like with the All-Rookie ballots, aside from the centres, these votes mostly mirror my Hart and Norris votes.

As always, it was really interesting to see how my votes diverged from the other voting members. It goes to show you, we all see the game a little bit differently.