Nikita Kucherov won the Hart Memorial Trophy at Wednesday night's NHL Awards in Las Vegas as the player judged most valuable to his team.
Sidney Crosby finished in second place in Hart voting, but it wasn't even close. Kucherov finished with 1,677 points (164 first-place votes, three second-place, two third-place, and two fourth-place). Crosby earned 739 points (three first-place, 65 second-place, 33 third-place, 26 fourth-place, 11 fifth-place). Connor McDavid finished third in Hart voting with 465 points (one first-place, 35 second-place, 23 third-place, 22 fourth-place, 29 fifth-place).
The full Hart voting can be seen below:
Dejan voted for Kucherov, Alex Ovechkin, Crosby, Johnny Gaudreau, and John Tavares. His full ballot can be found here.
Crosby was nearly a finalist for the Selke Trophy as the forward who most excels in the defensive aspects of the game. He finished fourth in the voting behind Ryan O'Reilly, Patrice Bergeron and Mark Stone:
Selke Trophy winner Ryan O’Reilly led the NHL in face-off wins for the second consecutive season while topping all @StLouisBlues skaters in plus-minus (+22) and ice time per game (20:46).
Full Results: https://t.co/Cp3JoZOeVJ #NHLAwards #NHLStats pic.twitter.com/y0lwvzFTod
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) June 20, 2019
Crosby was named to the NHL's Second All-Star Team for the fourth time in his career. He's also been a First-Team All-Star four times.
Crosby also handled this pretty well:
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) June 20, 2019
MORE FROM THE NHL AWARDS
• Canucks forward Elias Pettersson beat out Jordan Binnington and Rasmus Dahlin for the Calder Trophy as the NHL's rookie of the year. Mario Lemieux's daughter Alexa was one of the presenters for the award, along with Wayne Gretzky's son Trevor and Luc Robitaille's son Jessarae. Reminder that the voting takes place at the end of the regular season, so Binnington's postseason performance was not taken into account.
• Florida’s Aleksander Barkov won the Lady Byng Trophy for sportsmanship, beating Sean Monahan and O'Reilly. Barkov opened his acceptance speech with this hilarious comment about Panthers fans:
Christ, Barkov. pic.twitter.com/Fk5YdTLWCj
— Mike Pfeil (@mikeFAIL) June 20, 2019
• Wild forward Jason Zucker won the King Clancy Trophy for his work in the Minnesota community. Zucker and his wife Carly run a fundraising campaign for the Zucker Family Suite and Broadcast Studio at the University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital. Henrik Lundqvist and Oliver Ekman-Larsson were also up for the award.
• Kucherov won the Ted Lindsay Award for the most outstanding player in the NHL as voted by the players. McDavid and Patrick Kane were the other finalists.
• Calgary’s Mark Giordano won the Norris Trophy for the league's best defenseman, beating Brent Burns and Victor Hedman. Kris Letang finished sixth in the voting, but nobody even came close to Giordano:
Norris voting wasn't even close ... pic.twitter.com/1uGt8gQVLv
— Lou Korac (@lkorac10) June 20, 2019
• Islanders goaltender Robin Lehner won the Masterton Trophy as the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey. Lehner opened up about his struggles with addiction and mental health issues during the season.
• O'Reilly won the Selke Trophy as the NHL's best defensive forward. Bergeron and Stone were the other finalists.
• Islanders head coach Barry Trotz won the Jack Adams award as the best coach in the league, beating out finalists Craig Berube and Jon Cooper. The award was announced by host Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell after reviving their old "Good Burger" sketch from the Nickelodeon show All That. Trotz accepted a burger along with the award.
The Jack Adams AND a burger?! Barry Trotz's lucky night. #NHLAwards pic.twitter.com/Usa9vdvBU6
— NHL GIFs (@NHLGIFs) June 20, 2019
• Tampa Bay’s Andre Vasilevsky won the Vezina Trophy as the league's best goaltender. Lehner and Ben Bishop were also finalists.
• Predators forward and former Flyer Wayne Simmonds won the Mark Messier NHL Leadership Award. Mark Giordano and Justin Williams were finalists.
• The Willie O'Ree Community Hero Award was a new award for this year. The inaugural award went to Rico Phillips, who founded the Flint Inner City Youth Hockey program.
• Toronto’s Auston Matthews was revealed as the cover athlete for the EA Sports NHL20 video game.
Skill. Style. Chel.
Congratulations to our very own @AM34 on being named @EASPORTSNHL #NHL20 cover athlete ? ? ?https://t.co/qp6bHIPVA9 pic.twitter.com/52dsT67qbE
— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) June 20, 2019
• One of the league's fan-voted awards was for the best "feel good" moment. Carey Price's moment with this young fan, Anderson, who had recently lost his mother was the top vote-getter:
This is everything — this young fan, Anderson, met his idol @CP0031, after his mother passed away due to cancer. She had promised him that she would do everything in her power to help the two meet and it happened. This right here is hockey. #OurGreatGame
(? FB/ Tammy Whitehead) pic.twitter.com/ww6jLM2yoF
— NHL (@NHL) March 1, 2019
Anderson was in attendance for the awards and was brought up on stage, where Price came out to surprise him:
It's one of those moments that's bigger than the game. #NHLAwards pic.twitter.com/UnIHDzr4Th
— NHL (@NHL) June 20, 2019
• I thought Kenan was great as the host. He had some great moments:
The reactions from the players killed me pic.twitter.com/XQCUeUqA9g
— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) June 20, 2019
