Hobey Baker Award Committee Excludes Beniers and Hughes from Final Three
Denver’s Brink, Minnesota State’s McKay, Minnesota’s Meyers named 2022 Hobey Hat Trick finalists as top college hockey player
That's fine we've got larger hardware in mind ;)
One guy on each of the other teams in the Frozen Four. Hope the guys take it personally and take it out on them.
Get their revenge with a National Championship.
Boooo! Down with the Committee! BOOOOOOO!!!!!
Kyle Connor should've won the Hobey.
Beniers and Hughes can win the Championship.
I think they should both come back to try for it again.
Didn’t Jimmy Vesey win it over Dylan Larkin? That aged well.
He won it over Kyle Connor, which aged even worse.
March 31st, 2022 at 11:01 PM ^
WUT?!?!
March 31st, 2022 at 11:10 PM ^
Makes me wonder, like others here, how they might console themselves . . .
Not surprised about Brink. The guy has been an assist machine this year with a 14-42-56 line. I'm a little surprised Meyers made it and I'm surprised but also not surprised they picked McKay over Levi. Devon Levi had the 2nd highest save percentage ever in the NCAA at .952. This seems like a lifetime achievement award for McKay which is the kind of dumb thing voters would do instead of actually voting for the best player this year. Boooo votersss
McKay had a better win%, better GAA, and played way more minutes so I think it's fair he's nominated, though you could argue for any one of Peretz, McKay or Levi
I think win% is more a team stat than a goalie stat and McKay definitely benefits from having an elite defensive team in front of him. Northeastern was a bad Hockey East team told held together by Levi putting up that .952. I'm not going to die on the hill, but I think Levi deserves it over McKay
Perets has zero argument. Played an atrocious schedule void of any real offensive firepower. Same reason Quinnipiac was a low 2 seed despite having the 2nd best record in the country. Put up a lot of empty numbers. Got exposed against SCSU and Michigan.
30 saves on 34 shots (.882) against St Cloud State
19 saves on 23 shots (.826) against Michigan (pulled after 2nd period)
An .859 combined save percentage in the two biggest games of the year, against the only two offenses he’s faced with a pulse since playing North Dakota in October.
I’d like to think they take strength of competition into consideration for these awards.
Hobey committee seems to have a preference for veteran players (Vesey over Conner for example). So Meyers, McKay and Brink (he’s a junior) don’t surprise me as their picks.
Since the year 2000, only 5 winners have been freshmen or sophomores, only one of which was a freshman. 2 of the last 3 winners have been sophomores though.
Go prove them wrong young men. Go Blue Forever!!!
Win it all!!!
I'm not surprised and not really bothered by this.
It's not a season with a standout player, and between the depth Michigan has, the large number of games lost to international play, and the fact that no one single Michigan player really seized the narrative as the best, it's hard to choose any of them as a Hobey favorite. Luke was catching his stride and could theoretically have gotten in there, but it's not offensive to me that he didn't.
This is a far cry from the Connor/Vesey debacle that certain Michigan fans* will not ever let go. A few days ago, understanding that I didn't really have a clear picture of the national college hockey landscape and hadn't seen all of the 10 finalists play, I figuratively threw a dart and guessed three guys that would get picked, and happened to guess these three just based on a combination of stats, team success, and name recognition.
I'm guessing Mckay wins, but it could also be Brink.
If Hughes returns next year, he's as much of a preseason favorite as you're going to get. He could easily score 50 points, which is a very good offensive season *for a forward*, and that sort of statline usually puts a defenseman into Hobey contention. Power and Hughes are both at about 1 ppg (Power exactly, Hughes is just a point shy of it) but with reduced games it wasn't enough. This season.
*by which I mean me
The vast majority of Hobey Baker winners have been seniors or juniors. There've been just a handful of underclassmen winners, and most of those have been in the last few years. Only two freshmen have won the award.
IOW, if you want to maximize your chances of winning the Hobey Baker, play at least 3 seasons in college.
Somewhat. Connor got jobbed because he wasn't in the East and so it took a while to get attention. But it was definitely *jobbed*. On the other hand, young and/or western players can certainly grab hold of the narrative and build momentum. Nobody would argue that Paul Kariya wasn't a worthy or obvious winner as a freshman, and Ryan Miller's win as a goalie did catch some lightning in a bottle but was also based on a season that was astonishing statistically and happened at a program that was, at the time, one of the premiere programs in the sport.
The Michigan draft class has plenty of publicity. Everyone knows all about them, which means that the "let the voters get to know you" phase is done. The problem is that they didn't play enough games and didn't put up gaudy stats. And, if I'm being brutally honest, I might even be a bit disappointed by this; I feel like the Beniers/Johnson line (which has had Brisson on it for a big chunk of the season) could have been more productive from a points standpoint this year, and for various reasons that did not occur. It is, obviously, as fun to watch as it can get, but hasn't always gotten the scoring, and perhaps that is somewhat due to the team's depth and Mel's efforts to develop the players for the future as well as the present and to keep them more defensively responsible. Maybe.
If Beniers or KJ or Brisson was scoring 1.5 ppg right now they'd be in the hat trick and could well win. We don't have a guy scoring like that this season and that's the reason it's three other guys.
I don’t think Connor’s issue was that he wasn’t from the East. I think it’s more that they wanted to reward the veteran guy in Jimmy Vesey for whatever reason. Something they have a history of doing. Juniors and seniors get the award far more often than freshmen and sophomores.
For comparison: since 2000 15 of the 22 winners have been from “Western” schools (Miami being the furthest east in the grouping). All 3 finalists this year are from “Western” schools. The East Coast bias that gets brought up constantly doesn’t really have any impact on the award.
Rigged.