We’re almost at the end of 2024, which means we’re almost half through the 2020s. That reminded me of a decades-based idea I’ve had kicking around for a while, and since I don’t have the patience to wait five more years, we’re doing it today.
What if, at the end of every decade, we went back over the last ten years of major award winners and gave out one bonus award to someone who’d deserved one but never won?
The idea would be simple enough, and it would annoy the sort of people who performatively complain about participation trophies, and those are both good things. So today, I’m going back to the 1980s to figure out who deserves the bonus trophy for four awards: the Hart, the Norris, the Vezina and the Jack Adams. I’m not including the Selke because I feel like defensive play is too subjective, or the Lady Byng because it isn’t a real award, or the Mark Messier because I don’t want to doom anyone. But I think the big four should make for some fun arguments, so let’s do this.
We’ll start by heading back to a time when the music was great, the Norris Division was not and everyone had bad hair.
1980s
The 1980s Hart Trophy list ends up being a good place to start because it’s the most wide-open scenario we’ll encounter. Only two players, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux, won the Hart in the ’80s, so we’ve got our pick of almost the entire league. A few obvious names jump out, like Peter Stastny (who had more points in the decade than anyone besides Gretzky) and Steve Yzerman (who won the Pearson, now known as the Ted Lindsay, in 1989). But my pick is Marcel Dionne, a two-time Hart finalist and 1980 Art Ross and Pearson winner.
The Norris is a bit trickier, with seven different real-world winners off the board, not to mention a 1970s winner in Denis Potvin. I thought about Borje Salming, but his peak was in the 1970s, as was Brad Park’s. Larry Murphy would have a solid case. But in the end, I think we can listen to the voters here and go with a player who was the Norris runner-up three times in the decade without ever winning. Come get your bonus trophy, Mark Howe.
The Philadelphia Flyers retired Mark Howe’s number in 2012, but he never won the Norris. (Rob Carr / Getty Images)
The Vezina only went back to being the best goaltender award in 1982 – before that, it was a stats-based award that was basically what the Jennings is now – but it gave us eight different winners in eight years. That ends up covering most of the big names you’d think of from the decade, and a few you probably wouldn’t. But I’m going to go with Mike Liut, who won the Pearson in 1981 and almost certainly would have won the Vezina if it was voted on back then. He was also a finalist in 1987, so he was hardly a one-hit wonder, and probably deserves more credit from modern-day fans than he gets.
Finally, the Jack Adams will be tricky because voters famously hate to give it to the same guy twice. We do find history’s only back-to-back winner in the 1980s, with Jacques Demers taking the trophy home in 1987 and 1988, but otherwise the names are all over the map. We can’t pick Glen Sather, Pat Burns or Mike Keenan, and Al Arbour and Scotty Bowman won in the 1970s. There’s a case for Jacques Lemaire, but since we know he’s going to win in both the ’90s and ’00s, let’s cheat and pass on him. In the end, I can’t come up with an obvious candidate, so I’ll go with a beloved name who at least won’t get me yelled at. On the strength of a .548 record, making the playoffs every year, a trip to the conference final, and a decorated resume outside the NHL that shouldn’t count but can’t hurt, we’ll award our Bonus Jack Adams to Badger Bob Johnson.
Bonus Hart: Marcel Dionne
Bonus Norris: Mark Howe
Bonus Vezina: Mike Liut
Bonus Jack Adams: Bob Johnson
1990s
With Gretzky no longer hogging the MVP spotlight, we get seven different Hart winners in the 1990s. And in a fun twist, none of the non-winners were finalists more than once, so the field is wide open. I could go with a homer pick in 1993 runner-up Doug Gilmour, or maybe somebody like 1998 finalist Teemu Selanne or even Yzerman, who wasn’t a finalist at all in the decade but was still very productive. Instead, I’m going to go back to an old favorite who deserved to be even more decorated than he already was: We get the rare blue line Hart win, kind of, as Ray Bourque gets his hands on the trophy he absolutely should have won in 1990.
Bourque can’t double up for the Norris, an award he won three times in the ’90s to go with his two ’80s wins. I’m also going to pass on two-time ’90s runner-up Nicklas Lidstrom, since I have a nagging feeling he might win a few in the 2000s. I took a hard look at Phil Housley, and Murphy has a case again. But I think the pick here is a Hall of Famer who was a finalist in the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s but never won: Scott Stevens.
In goal, the combination of the legendary Dominik Hasek and Patrick Roy winning a combined seven times and weird outlier Jim Carey winning once leaves us with lots of ground to cover. We know Martin Brodeur will get his in the ’00s, which leaves the door open to some ’90s stalwarts like Mike Richter and Kirk McLean. But in the end, I’m going to go with another personal favorite and award our Bonus Vezina to Curtis Joseph, who was fantastic with three different teams in the decade.
Curtis Joseph was a star for the Blues, Oilers and Leafs during the 90s. (Ian Tomlinson / Allsport)
The Jack Adams offers only one repeat winner in Pat Burns, so we have some solid names to consider. You could make a case for John Muckler, Terry Crisp and Larry Robinson. But let’s go with another fan favorite and award the decade’s bonus trophy to two-time finalist Roger Neilson.
Bonus Hart: Ray Bourque
Bonus Norris: Scott Stevens
Bonus Vezina: Curtis Joseph
Bonus Jack Adams: Roger Neilson
2000s
We didn’t get a repeat Hart winner in the decade until Alexander Ovechkin in 2008 and 2009, so we’re a bit limited in finding candidates for the bonus version. Two-time runner-up Evgeni Malkin will win the Hart in 2012, so we’ll ignore him. It’s very tempting to go with Martin Brodeur, who finished third in Hart voting in 2003, 2004 and 2007. But I’m going to play the personal favorite card one more time and go with a three-time finalist who probably should have won in 2002. Congratulations, Jarome Iginla.
The decade’s Norris voting was dominated by Lidstrom, who took home six of the nine trophies. (Remember that we also lost a year due to the lockout.) With previous winners like Chris Pronger, Rob Blake and Scott Niedermayer also banking plenty of finalist spots, we aren’t left with a ton of great options. So I’m going to go with a guy who was never a finalist, but had five top-six finishes in the decade, including four in a row. That would be Sergei Gonchar, who bolsters his borderline HHOF case with a made-up Norris.
Sergei Gonchar racked up top-10 Norris votes in Washington and Pittsburgh during the 2000s. (Doug Pensinger / Getty Images / NHLI)
The new decade means the Vezina switches from the Hasek show to the Brodeur show, with four wins in five seasons for the Blues legend. Since Henrik Lundqvist gets his eventually, we’ll go to the decade’s other Hall of Famer and award our bonus Vezina to Roberto Luongo.
The decade’s Jack Adams offers a different winner for every season, including names like Bob Francis and Bill Barber that I had to double-check. Jacques Martin already has one, and Darryl Sutter and Barry Trotz will get theirs eventually. I was leaning toward Peter Laviolette, if only because he could probably use some good news these days. But I think the winner here is actually two-time finalist Ron Wilson, who spent the decade having a lot of admirable success in Washington and San Jose and also coached the Maple Leafs.
Bonus Hart: Jarome Iginla
Bonus Norris: Sergei Gonchar
Bonus Vezina: Roberto Luongo
Bonus Jack Adams: Ron Wilson
2010s
We’ve been building toward it, but this is where we hit full-fledged Hart Trophy chaos, with the decade offering up ten different winners. That still leaves us with some strong candidates, including two-time finalist John Tavares, 2014 runner-up Ryan Getzlaf, and (especially) 2018 finalist Anze Kopitar. But eventually, I narrowed the list down to two names: Claude Giroux and Steven Stamkos. Giroux was a finalist in 2014 while racking up more points than any other non-winner, while Stamkos scored more goals in the decade than anyone besides Ovechkin while finishing as Hart runner-up in 2012. It’s a close race, but I’m going with the goal-scorer and giving the bonus Hart to Steven Stamkos.
The Norris is a bit easier, despite a solid case for Kris Letang. I think this one has to go to Shea Weber, who finished second in 2011 and 2012 to go with a third in 2014, fourth in 2015 and sixth in 2017. He’s up there with Stevens among the best defensemen to never win a Norris in the modern era. Except now, both guys have one.
Shea Weber spent the 2010s as a star in Nashville and Montreal but never picked up a Norris. (Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
The Vezina isn’t quite as straightforward, although the field clears up a bit when you know that Connor Hellebuyck and Marc-Andre Fleury will win in the 2020s. Mix in Luongo already winning our bonus trophy last decade, and only two of the decade’s winningest goalies are missing from the Vezina ranks. With apologies to Corey Crawford, this one goes to two-time finalist Jonathan Quick.
Our Jack Adams might be the easiest call in this entire piece, and the one that got me thinking about this fake award in the first place. There’s a case for Mike Babcock, which is awkward, but we don’t have to worry because Jon Cooper has somehow never won a Jack Adams despite being widely acknowledged as one of the league’s best coaches since being hired in 2013. He’s been a finalist twice, and now has our fake award to go in his trophy case, at least until the real-world voters give him the real thing one of these years.
Bonus Hart: Steven Stamkos
Bonus Norris: Shea Weber
Bonus Vezina: Jonathan Quick
Bonus Jack Adams: Jon Cooper
There you go: 16 new awards handed out, in what we can call a belated holiday to gift to some deserving-ish winners. Now I’m turning it over to you, for two main assignments: Go ahead and make the case for anyone you think is still being snubbed, and (more importantly) please come up with a good name for the once-a-decade bonus award that I can use when I revisit this concept in 2029.
(Top photo of Jon Cooper and Jarome Iginla: Mike Carlson / Getty Images and Ian Tomlinson / Allsport)
