The NHL continues to release the finalists for the major regular season awards, this time announcing the nominees for the Lady Byng Trophy. The award is given out to “the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly play and conduct” and is often given to those players who perform at a high level without taking many penalties. Last year’s winner was Aleksander Barkov of the Florida Panthers, who took just eight penalty minutes all season.
This year’s finalists are Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche, Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and Ryan O’Reilly of the St. Louis Blues.
MacKinnon, who is also one of the finalists for the Ted Lindsey, saw his penalty minutes plummet this season even as he took on an even larger role for the Avalanche. The 24-year old center was left without many of his talented running mates for long stretches but managed to still score 93 points and take only 12 PIM. That continued a downward trend since he set his career-high with 55 minutes in 2017-18. MacKinnon has received votes for the Lady Byng on just one occasion previously and has not won an individual award since the Calder Trophy in 2014.
Matthews meanwhile also set a career-low in penalty minutes, but his total of eight isn’t surprising given how few he’s taken in his career so far. Through four seasons and 282 games, the Toronto superstar has amassed just 46 PIM and has finished in the top-8 for Lady Byng voting in each. He too has only taken home a Calder Trophy among individual awards, though he trailed David Pastrnak and Alex Ovechkin by just a single tally for this year’s Rocket Richard.
O’Reilly represents the only past winner of the Lady Byng among the finalists. He took it home in 2014 when he took just a single minor penalty all season. That’s a feat he repeated in 2018, but he ended up losing the award to William Karlsson of the Vegas Golden Knights. Though such a strong defensive center, O’Reilly has been one of the best players in the entire league at staying out of the penalty box. He has just 106 PIM over an 11-year, 804-game career and hasn’t taken more than 12 in a season since he was a teenager. In addition to the Lady Byng he won in 2014, O’Reilly also won the Selke and Conn Smythe trophies last season with the St. Louis Blues.
if Matthews wins ill vomit
They couldn’t even wait a year for his moronic actions to be in the past. The NHL truly never wants to get out of its own way.
If Ryan Oreilly wins, I will drive my car into the side of a Tim Horton’s.
Why?
I know, I mean a guy with 10 pim shouldn’t even be in the running ;-)
How is It that Bergeron never won this
@case7187 – Maybe they’re playing a “quota” system – Bergeron’s reserved, maybe automatically, for the Selke (always deserved), so he can’t be allowed to get any other awards. Hey, if he’s a worthy candidate for, say, five awards, then he should be a finalist for all five, in my book. They’ve done this in the past, so is this going to be the new “COVID-Adjustment” going forward?
Because he has never been under 20 pim in a full season while the winners are generally under 10.
Jaccob Slavin overlooked