Pisani not winning the award, in one phrase, is a fucking crock of shit. End of story.

And to rub salt in the wounds, the most overrated player in the NHL is named as the other blueliner on the First All Star Team. As if the Norris nomination wasn't enough of a joke....how a second pairing even-strength defenseman can be mentioned in the same breath as Nicklas Lidstrom is unbelievable.
 

Blake took a pill everyday for a highly treatable cancer that is not expected to threaten his life or career.

Pisani basically wasted away, almost had to retire, losing 50 lbs in the process, but then came back and made a decent season out within six months.

Bah!

And did anyone catch Phaneuf's sour mug when he lost out on the Norris? Good thing he had no chance of winning it.
 

By the way, I'm not one to play down cancer, but... well, it's an award based on some already-weird criteria.
 

Mike W - I don't think it's fair to say that Blake's leukemia "is not expected to threaten his life or career."

I don't know how much detail you want about this, but as a specialist in blood diseases I can tell you that you are wrong on both counts.

I'm not trying to say he deserves this odd award any more or less than Pisani, but Blake has freakin' LEUKEMIA here. Give the guy a break. It's not his fault the NHL doesn't know it has a Western Conference.
 

Apart from Ovechkin, players from east of Detroit seem shockingly underrepresented as well. For shame! Time for NHL Awards to be handed out like Canadian cabinet appointments.
 

Also, that is FUCKING AWESOME that Phaneuf is a first All-Star. Oiler fans have backlashed so hard about Farnsworth, you'd think at this point that teams are looking forward to taking advantage of him, or thereabouts. Dream on, folks.
 

And did anyone catch Phaneuf's sour mug when he lost out on the Norris?

I didn't watch the awards, but you have to keep in mind that Phaneuf, since he entered the NHL, has looked like he should be shaking his fist at kids and shouting "Get off my lawn!"

It's nothing new.
 

I'm waiting for the apocryphal BoA post:

Dion Phaneuf: Bah, he's just Andy Delmore with a Norris Trophy.
 

Mike W - I don't think it's fair to say that Blake's leukemia "is not expected to threaten his life or career."

I'm just going by the ridiculously optimistic prognosis that Blake's doctors gave him.

Anyway, I'm just trying to find a way to get Pisani a trophy since he was robbed of the Conn Cmythe in 2006, and apparently I'm not above stealing it from a guy with cancer.
 

Also, that is FUCKING AWESOME that Phaneuf is a first All-Star. Oiler fans have backlashed so hard about Farnsworth, you'd think at this point that teams are looking forward to taking advantage of him, or thereabouts. Dream on, folks.

He's not on his team's first pairing at ES yet (he was playing with Anders Eriksson for chrissakes). He's got no business on the first all-star team or as a Norris finalist after three NHL seasons.

2-3 years from now, quite possibly a different story. Way too much hype, way too soon. If Flames fans want to try and defend him, go ahead, but the hard facts show that he's nowhere near the truly elite NHL defenders at this point (guys who produce 50 plus points and play big minutes, but are their coaches' first choice against other team's top offensive forwards).

Talk to me once he starts doing what he does, only while playing with Robyn Regehr, OK? Until then, he's more hype than substance in my books.
 

Dion Phaneuf: Bah, he's just Andy Delmore with a Norris Trophy.

Priceless. Absolutely priceless. Let me counter- Jim Carey: Andrew Raycroft with a Vezina Trophy.
 

That Edmonton fans hate him so much makes me like Dion all the more. In a way, their vitriol feeds the hype. Thanks guys!
 

That Edmonton fans hate him so much makes me like Dion all the more. In a way, their vitriol feeds the hype. Thanks guys!

Two years from now, he may actually justify the hype. Call it what you want, but I haven't seen a Flames fan make a conclusive arguments against any charges that Dion was overrated or that his Norris nomination was actually justified. Probably because, deep down inside, they know as well as the rest of us do that it's a big farce (maybe not as big a farce as Pisani not getting the Masterton, but I digress).

At the point when Dion actually justifies all the lofty praise, the setting on the hate-knob will be set to "Pronger" when it comes to Phrankeneuf. Right now, it's somewhere between "Comrie" and "Burke".
 

have u ever concidered that maybe blake won the award because... **wait for it** (***no, really wait for it...***) ... HE DESERVED IT??
 

I stopped paying attention to the NHL awards years ago. Frankly, I don't even know why people care about them anymore: any resemblance between them and reality was liquidated when Jacques Plante retired.

Everybody knew Blake would win the Masterton, to pick the most relevant example. Everybody. Nobody outside of Leafs fandom thought he deserved to, but everybody knew he would. And he did. And, glancing at this comments thread, nobody seems even remotely surprised by all the bologna. It's the same reason the Shooter-Tutor is the only 1960s Maple Leaf not in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

On the other hand, I know how much fun it is to rail against the stupid NHL. In fact, I guess I just did it. So I care a little more than I should.
 

It actually blows me away that anyone watches the show. I think you'd get more drama and uncertainty watching a WWE Awards Show.
 

I think you'd get more drama and uncertainty watching a WWE Awards Show.

You know, if the Masterton award presentation had ended with Pisani coming up seemingly to shake Blake's hand like the sportsman he is only to knock Blake unconscious with a steel chair and stand cackling while Ron McLean screamed "my god! my god!", I totally would watch.
 

Still tyring to figure out how Phaneuf beat out Chara for the first team.

QUALCOMP: Big Z +0.13, Ugly 0.00
QUALTEAM: Big Z +0.09, Ugly +0.25

Despite this huge match-up discrepancy in which Chara played tougher opponents with weaker teammates, Big Z posted a better plus, with way more hits and fairly equivalent boxcar numbers. Chara was the captain and team leader in every respect, something you can't say about Dion just yet.

I read more than few posts from Flames fans on this very blog about how Phaneuf's 5v5 play had regressed this season. I saw him play a couple of excellent games, a couple of brain dead ones, with a few somewhere in the middle. No way does he belong in the top two in the NHL. He's coming, but he's not there yet.

PS: Since nobody else seems to be mentioning it, kudos to Tom Gilbert for making the All-Rookie team. The Oilers have had a few defencemen (Geoff Smith, Boris Mironov, Tom Poti, now Gilbert) on that squad over the years.
 

The Oilers have had a few defencemen (Geoff Smith, Boris Mironov, Tom Poti, now Gilbert) on that squad over the years.

That right there should be a warning sign to everyone who is convinced we are winning the making the playoffs next year. That was very cruel of you, Bruce. :)
 

Now after another gander up and down the awards list, and this is coming from a guy with the utmost admiration for Martin Brodeur (I hope he breaks ALL of Patrick Roy's records)....I don't understand how Nabokov didn't take home the Vezina.
 

I didn't watch the awards, but you have to keep in mind that Phaneuf, since he entered the NHL, has looked like he should be shaking his fist at kids and shouting "Get off my lawn!"

It's nothing new.

There's this 'when they were young' feature in The Hockey News, and a few weeks back they had a shot of Phaneuf in a Jr. Oilers uniform at about age 7.

Exact same expression.
 

I don't understand how Nabokov didn't take home the Vezina.

Same reason Lidstrom wins the Norris every single year. It's automatic.

a few weeks back they had a shot of Phaneuf in a Jr. Oilers uniform at about age 7.

A Jr. Oilers uniform? I just puked in my mouth.
 

//a few weeks back they had a shot of Phaneuf in a Jr. Oilers uniform at about age 7.
Exact same expression.//

A Jr. Oilers uniform? I just puked in my mouth.

Andy: I guess you too are wearing the exact same expression. Ugly looks like he pukes in his mouth between shifts.
 

On PunjabiOil's blog a little while ago, PDO had a convincing criticism of the nomination of Phaneuf for Norris.

The problem is, to my mind, is the only bugger who would meet his criterion in any of the past 10 years is Nick Lidstrom, and as good as he is, DET has always had the horses to go power vs power with matchups, so Lidstrom is usually making those terrific first passes to some pretty damn good players.

I mean most of the Oiler fans I know are enamoured with Pronger and thought he deserved the Norris last year, but really he was playing in the second pairing with the highest quality teammates, behind Niedermayer/Beauchemin all season, by any sensible measure and by eye. And right through the playoffs.

Playing tough minutes on a poor team, would he put up better numbers at evens than Eric Brewer? Probably most years IMO, a difference of about EV +5 or so. (Of course Pronger is a difference maker on the PP, and Brewer is crap on that unit ... still).

Hell, when Pronger won the Hart and Norris back in 2000, I didn't think he was even the best defensemen on his team. MacInnis was a beast.

I don't know if Conriy was nominated for the Selke that year, but if he played enough games he should have been, because when Pierre Turgeon is your top centre ... no way in hell Q was going power vs power.

In any case, Pronger was +27 at 5v5 that year. Playing a whack with Turgeon if we go by events. And he was -2 while playing with Conroy. He had some crazy good 4v4, empty net, and SH + rates though, and presumably some career best shooting percentage rates (for and against) while he was on the ice. leading to a +52 in the newspaper. All the same goes for Pierre Turgeon that year.

Not to pick on Pronger, he's a hell of a player and would have gotten my vote for Oilers MVP in 50/06 in spite of his modest counting numbers. He's just the convenient one to use, you could say the same for any of the D in this league not named Lidstrom.

As much as it pains me to say it, Phaneuf belongs in the large second tier of high end NHL defensemen who can score on the PP (with Pronger, Gonchar, Chara, Niedermayer, Zubov, etc).

I'm way behind in my blog reading, and have read very few comments, so forgive if this has been beaten to death elsewhere.
 

Well, at least we can all take solace in the fact that the Second Best Defenceman in the NHL™ got dissed by a bunch of eight year olds at the Awards ceremonies. It doesn't make up for four years of MacGuire fellatio, but it's a start.
 

I thought Pisani should have won, too - I guess the word "cancer" is scary enough to attract more attention than ulcerative colitis.

In conversation afterwards with people who, ulike me, watched the awards show, the topics of conversation were two:

1. An awful lot of people found themselves yelling at the screen, "Punch him, Gordie! Punch him!" when Bettman was on stage with Gordie Howe.

2. There was much snickering over the mis-spelling of Lidstrom's name as "Lindstrom" on the back of the kid's jersey. It isn't as though he's won the Norris or anything, right? :)