The Capitals fell short of their ultimate goal. The Stanley Cup will have to wait until next year – at least. But Alex Ovechkin and Jose Theodore will at least return from Las Vegas with some hardware after Wednesday’s NHL Awards.
Ovechkin won the Ted Lindsay Award – formerly the Lester B. Pearson Award – as the players’ choice for the league’s most outstanding player. He is the first person so honored three years in a row since Wayne Gretzky in the early 1980s. The Great One actually won it four years in a row so Ovechkin still has something to shoot for. He did not, however, extend his Hart Trophy winning streak. That went to Vancouver center Henrik Sedin, who led the NHL with 112 points. Ovechkin had won the Hart the previous two seasons as the writers’ choice for most valuable player.
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It was a bittersweet day for Theodore, who earned the Masterton Trophy for perseverance and dedication to the sport of hockey. He gave an emotional speech in honor of his late son, Chace, who died last August of respiratory complications from a premature birth. Theodore somehow pulled himself together and had a fine season. He and his wife, Stephanie Cloutier, started Saves for Kids, a fundraising program benefiting the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Children’s National Medical Center in the District. That is where Chace spent his brief life. Theodore donated $35,000 to the center after the season.
As Tarik El Bashir of the Washington Post reported from Las Vegas on Wednesday night, Theodore also recently learned he will not be back with the Caps next season. It was never in the cards, really. Theodore was supplanted in the playoffs – again – by Semyon Varlamov. He made $4.5 million this season and the Caps need to save every penny they can to sign two centers and a defenseman. And in addition to Varlamov, Washington has another rising star in goal in Michal Neuvirth, who has now won back-to-back AHL titles at Hershey. Plus, Braden Holtby gives the organization another top prospect at the position. They are all young and they are all cheap. And in this salary-cap age that is vital. Even at a reduced price the Caps couldn’t afford to keep Theodore and so they won’t. Comcast’s Corey Masisak had more on Theodore from Las Vegas.
Ovechkin had no such conflicting feelings, even if he did miss out on the Hart. Full disclosure – I had him first on my Professional Hockey Writers’ Association ballot. Just thought that Ovechkin’s overall numbers in 9-to-10 fewer games than Sedin and Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby pushed him over the top. And, yes, I know four of those games were his own fault after on-ice transgressions landed him a pair of suspensions from the NHL. Ovechkin was also named first-team All-NHL for the fifth season in a row. He was joined by teammate Mike Green, who made that elite group for the second straight season.
Green finished as the Norris Trophy runner-up. Again, being honest, that was where I placed him on my ballot for the league’s top defenseman behind Chicago’s Duncan Keith. There is no better offensive defenseman in the league than Green – and it’s not particularly close. But Keith put up big numbers himself, played huge minutes against quality competition in a deeper conference and was just a better two-way player. Make no mistake, Green deserved to be a Norris finalist. The angst from some quarters when he was named a finalist was silly. No one who watched the final 25 games of the regular-season would dismiss Green as a one-dimensional player. If they said it – or wrote it – they didn’t watch the games. Simple as that. The award is for best “all-around” defenseman. That clearly means voters get to consider his offensive contributions, too. They are unmatched.
And, no, Green’s sub-par play in the postseason doesn’t get factored in. It’s a 2010 regular-season award, not a slice of seven playoff games when we have no idea who’s hiding an injury. Unfortunately for Green, those playoff performances will affect him eventually. Fair or not, voters will remember them next spring when they put together their Norris ballots. It may take a 25-goal, 65-assist season – in other words, a historic year for a defenseman in this era – for some writers to take him seriously as a Norris candidate again. That’s just the way it is. Thus goes the awards season for the Caps – another productive one. Up next: the NHL draft. Then free agency hits before the endless summer begins in earnest. So enjoy these next few weeks. It’ll be a while before the hockey news flows this fast and furious.
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