If you’re not already reading Emily Kaplan on ESPN, you probably should, because she always has great quotes from the league’s best players.
Recently she had comments about the Vegas Flu (And the one player that confirmed its existence) and this week she covered a bunch more, including how many stitches players have had, if they’d be open to teams in Europe and much more. The question that stood out to us was asking the players what new award they would introduce if asked.
The answers ended up being pretty funny – we can’t think of a more NHL Award than “Best Guy”.
Josh Manson, Anaheim Ducks defenseman: Defensive Defenseman. I'd like that. That'd help me, I think, because I don't think I'm going to do some damage in the offense category, but I might in the defensive category. I won it in college, and I felt it was nice because I wasn't going to win the offense one, but I still got credit.
Seguin: Best Guy. You'd have to take a poll around the league, and whoever gets the most votes would be the Best Guy.
Domi (when informed of Seguin's choice): Oh, I love Best Guy. It would just be for a good dude. Everyone likes him. Nobody can say anything bad about him. Good in the room. It's a popularity contest, but it's not necessarily someone who is the best player, but it's a guy without a selfish bone in his body. He does everything for his team, on and off the ice. Guy of the Year.
Lee: I'm sure one day we'll have a social media award. See who either has the most presence or gets the most followers or helps to promote the game. I'm sure something along those lines would happen. A former player who has really taken that on is Paul Bissonnette.
Giroux: Best Blooper. I think that's underrated. There's always funny bloopers out there, and fans would enjoy that. Our team, we love it when something happens, somebody falls on the blue line by themselves, and we always replay it. One time, Sean Couturier was late in a shift, he was on the ice like a minute and a half, and he made a nice play to get a breakaway, but he was absolutely dead tired. So he was further than everyone else, but they all just caught up to him. We watched that a lot.
We’re honestly in favour of all four of these awards.
If they really are going to do a best blooper award, we’re pretty sure there is already a winner. We know it wasn’t technically in a game, but it’s in the arena so we’re casting our vote.
