#like. slap him into first ballot hof territory i think vez is not entirely necessary.

[sergeifyodorov]

I feel like my one extremely hot take is that giving awards that have a specific purpose for lifetime achievement genuinely makes me mad. Whether it’s nhl trophies like the hart and Norris or Oscars or whatever else, you should win the award for doing the thing the award is actually given for not as a consolation prize. If you deserved to win one year and got robbed and now you’re up for it again but not the best and they want to give it to you, sorry, I don’t care. Sucks for you but if you don’t deserve it this year, you don’t get it. It just creates a continuous cycle where people who actually deserve it don’t get it and then they have to get it later, robbing someone else. The Hart award is given for being the most valuable player to your team in the season. If you never win them because you’re always really great and really close but someone else is better, that’s just how awards should work. This isn’t to say Nate would actually get one for this reason. He’s playing insane this season and is absolutely hugely valuable to his team. He should be a Hart contender just because of that. But the people that keep saying he should get a hart because he deserves to have one in his trophy case genuinely bug me.

EXACTLY like... they have a place for guys who are consistently in Hart/Vezina/etc talks but never win them. It's called the hall of fame!!!! The only time I would CONSIDER the rest of someone's career outside of that one specific year is -- beside the Masterton, which kind of does take it into account by design -- if it was a very close race, and things like linemates/standings/etc as well as the typical characteristics were all neck and neck. But that basically never happens!!