Columbus Blue Jackets Awards Night Filled with Mixed Emotions
The Columbus Blue Jackets were well represented at the NHL Awards show. The evening leaves a weird feeling today as last night was joyful for some and painful for others.
Representing the Columbus Blue Jackets were two players, Zach Werenski and Sergei Bobrovsky, as well as head coach John Tortorella. The trio were up for four awards in total.
That’s not to mention captain Nick Foligno who won two leadership awards on Tuesday.
Related Story: Captain Nick Foligno Brings Home Leadership Awards
Divided up between the award announcements last night was the NHL Expansion draft, giving the Vegas Golden Knights (most likely) the most awkward roster reveal in NHL history.
In case you didn’t see any of the spoiler alerts yesterday afternoon (see below), the Golden Knights took William Karlsson from the Columbus Blue Jackets.
We can address Mr. Friedman’s “CLB” abbreviation another day, but this report floating around killed most of the expansion drama.
In addition, Vegas took David Clarkson from Columbus as well as this year’s first-round pick and a 2019 second-round pick.
As GM Jarmo Kekäläinen said, his goal was to, “keep the core of our team intact.” Though losing Karlsson isn’t ideal, he did keep the core together.
The awards portion of the evening, on the other hand, was more ideal. The Blue Jackets did walk away with some hardware.
Sergei Bobrovsky wins second Vezina Trophy, comes in third for Hart
Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky won his second career Vezina trophy yesterday. A 2.06 goals against average, .931 save percentage and career-high 41 wins paved the way for the award to belong to him.
This trophy indicates a huge bounce back considering the season that Bobrovsky and the Jackets had in 2015-16. Simply staying healthy for the entire season was a big step for the goaltender, but this was icing on the cake.
Bobrovsky was also a finalist for the Hart Trophy, given to the MVP of the league. It’s not too surprising that he didn’t win the award considering the competition. Making it as far as he did is a huge compliment to the season he had.
John Tortorella wins Jack Adams Award
John Tortorella began the season with Bovada’s highest odds as being the first NHL coach to be fired.
Jack Adams Award winner John Tortorella was Bovada's odds-on-favorite to be the first coach fired when season started. #NHLAwards
— Tom Reed (@treed1919) June 22, 2017
Today, he’s a two-time Jack Adams winner working on a contract extension with the Blue Jackets. Whether the NHL world likes Torts or not, he deserved this award.
Zach Werenski finishes third in Calder voting
It was pretty clear all along that the winner of this year’s Calder Trophy would be Auston Matthews, the Toronto Maple Leafs forward.
Werenski very well could’ve won the award if he were a rookie any other year. He should have no shame in finishing where he did for the Calder this year.
We all know what he brings to the table, and sooner rather than later he could be bringing a different trophy to Columbus, one awarded to the best defenseman in the NHL.