Phaneuf and Lundqvist have been great this year. So has Crosby. The trophy has to go to Ovechkin, though. He is the Caps. They have scored a total of 226 goals this year, and Ovechkin has 52 of them. He's accounted for 23% of their goals! That's an absolutely obscene number for a rookie. (Just for comparison, Cheechoo has 21%, Jagr has 22%, and Crosby has 16% of their respective team's goals.) He's the only guy on that entire team that can create at all, so the opposition will regularly trap him and always design their defense for pretty much the sole purpose of stopping him. As bad as the Penguins are, Recchi, LeClair, and Gonchar are all solid players, particularly when you compare them to Dainius Zubrus, Brent Willsie, and Chris Clark, the best of Ovechkin's help. What really does it for me, though, is that Ovechkin is a much more all around player than Crosby. He gets back and plays better defense, is far tougher and loves to deliver the big hit. I can't wait to see the Caps put some talent around him. I can see him getting 120-130 points a year with someone to play with.
I'm going with Ovechkin, too. I watched a fair amount of both the Caps and the Pens this year, and I have to say that Ovechkin is pretty clearly the better player right now. Crosby may well go on to have a better career, at this point Ovechkin is your Calder trophy winner, and not just because of his point totals. He's a better two-way player than Crosby, and is a vicious checker to boot. I have to admit that I didn't see a single Flames game this year. I hear great things about Phaneuf, but I've never seen them for myself. I feel bad for Lundquist, who would likely be a leading candidate in any other year. He may not be quite as important to his team as Crosby or Ovechkin are, but the Rangers certainly don't look the same with Kevin Weekes in goal. On Preview: Pretty much exactly what fatfryar said.
My point was merely that goals are a better indicator than assists because assists are more susceptible to being gratuitously tacked-on. You can have an unassisted goal but you can't have an un-goaled assist. And so on. That's why I give the nod to goals in the rookie race. It's not that assists aren't important. They are merely less important on the whole.
how does the voting work? is it like baseball where each players ranked 1-10? could there be a case where Crosby and Ovechkin end up splitting votes and someone else swoops in to take it?
Can we still do the stickers on helmets? I'm not in any way, shape or form advocating the elimination of the second assist. I am just trying to stick up for the demolition men in front of the net. Not the ones crashing the net, because their impact to the game is well known. I'm speaking for the guys who day-in and day-out sacrifice their bodies in front of the net. Unselfishly taking slashes, hacks, cross-checks and spears to the back of their bodies for the sole purpose of deflecting a pass or screening a shot. I'm not taking anything away from the superstars or any other blue-collar player in the game, just trying to give credit where credit is due. As far as Rookie of the Year, my vote is for Ovechkin. Crosby is the real deal, but Ovechkin has a more all-around game. But my favorite rookie is Phaneuf. The man is a beast, who can flat out play the game.
What about the guys who stand in front of the net? They go there night after night getting the shit beat out of them (well, not as much this year with the new rules) to screen the goalie? The only time they get on the scoreboard is if they deflect a pass in to the net. If not, hardly anyone will know just how valuable that guy is. Damn, give him a sticker on his helmet or something. Let him know he's loved... I remember how well Dino Ciccarelli used to be at that. I remember watching a long distance game with my late father (he was in Mich on his computer and we we're emailing back and forth during the game) and Dino was taking the goalie stick up between his legs so many times and so hard that you'd swear he had to be a eunuch, if not at the start of his career certainly by the end of it.
Dino was taking the goalie stick up between his legs so many times and so hard that you'd swear he had to be a eunuch, He didn't get enough of those. Ciccarelli was a punk and deserved all the "splitters" he got. Ptui! /remembers Ciccarelli hitting Luke Richardson in the head/shoulders with a two-handed stick-swing The Ovechkin/Crosby comparison reminds me of the Magic/Bird comparison of the 1980s. All that is missing is moving one of them over to the west coast.
It's too bad niether of them are in the playoffs. Both of them seem to be big game players. For all those who didn't get to see Phaneuf, you will now - he is truly a big game performer. Hell, my team didn't even make it in and I'm still stoked (toked?) about the playoffs.
Another vote for Ovechkin. He's better than Crosby, right now. That might be age, or experience or whatever, but that doesn't matter. If Crosby had have really cared about the Calder, he should have stayed in the minors another year. Somehow, I don't think it will bother him all that much.
Ciccarelli was a punk and deserved all the "splitters" he got. I always thought it was the height of irony that he got so high-and-mighty when it came to Claude Lemieux: "I can't believe I had to shake this guy's freakin' hand..." Shut up, Dino, you mutt.
Shut up, Dino, you mutt. Awesome. Just awesome.
Weedy, I thinks we're on the same side of the argunent here. My point was that assisits were a good way of quantifing a power forward or defensemens offensive conribution to a team. Guys like Lidstrom or Larry Murphy deserve everyone of those points for their offensive contribution to their club, or in Murphy's case clubs. The breakout is one of the most inmportant aspects of a teams offense and having a good pucking moving defenseman really helps move things along so to speak. What was this thread about anyhow?
Ask Jonathan Cheechoo if assists matter. I bet if they made a highlight reel of both players, AO's would be longer in duration and more exciting to watch. There's a top ten video at the bottom of the page I linked, tsn.ca it's a little oldish though.
