The Professional Hockey Writers Association (PHWA) and the Meaning of Bias

Luck, that’s what the Las Vegas “Black Knights” are going to need in order to succeed as a hockey club in the desert – not trying to be funny, that’s just how I see it.

Last night the NHL Awards were fittingly hosted in new NHL expansion city Las Vegas, Nevada. Of course the stars rule this night year in and year out. Repeatable performances from household names such as Sidney Crosby and Patrick Kane (yay America), and Alexander Ovechkin left little to the imagination of what to expect from the voting panel, the PHWA. For those of you who don’t know, the PHWA is made up of accredited journalist and reporters nation wide – some of which you may know from your local sports station that report on hockey. This is the panel of voters who decide who gets each NHL award and individual trophy.

This year, we have already had one voting controversy in the NHL. The league opened up All Star voting to the fans, and the fans did what they could to run with it of course. The John Scott story is probably one of the best narratives in NHL history let alone this year - but I digress. The PHWA is supposed to be filled with hockey experts who take into account every statistic, every situation, for every player. Clearly, after Wednesday night’s awards, this has been proven false.

The bias shown in the PHWA on Wednesday was almost too obvious. It was enough that instead of writing an article breaking down the nights events and congratulating the individual players on their achievements, I am spending my free time complaining about a board of people who vote with the jersey’s they have hanging in there closets rather then with what player truly deserves the respect and honor.

The one major example of sheer and utter ignorance to individual statistical achievements from the PHWA voting panel was seen in the breakdown of the Vezina Trophy (best goaltender) votes.

First and foremost, congrats to Washington Captials netminder Brayden Holtby for winning the Vezina. Holtby had a record-breaking season and probably deserves to take this trophy home this year straight up. But the winner of this trophy is not the issue with the vote. New York Rangers and previous Vezina trophy winner Henrik Lundqvist had quite a season himself. The team he had in front of him could not do much to help – but Henrik, as always, put up huge numbers to remain one of the most elite goalies of all time. Lets compare these general regular season stat lines between Holtby and Lundqvist.

Holtby 2015-2016 Regular Season:

Lundqvist 2015-2016 Regular Season:

Yes, Holtby had the most wins, and yes he had a slightly higher save percentage, but one could argue that these stat lines are very similar considering the team Holtby had in front of him compared to Lundqvist’s. Not to mention that Henrik was first in the shots against column and the saves column. Oh, and he played one less game then Holtby. Now, I am not trying to make a case here for why Henrik should have received the trophy over Brayden – the real corruption here is in the breakdown of the PHWA voting for the Vezina.

No, you are not blind. There is not a SINGLE vote for Henrik from the PHWA for the Vezina trophy. I could go through and compare all of these goaltenders with Hank but when it’s all said and done – if I can compare him to the winner of the trophy, it is laughable when he gets not a single vote for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place.

The nominees for this trophy were selected back in late April. Regardless of Holtby, Bishop, and Quick taking the reigns for leading votes – there is obviously something wrong with this system and/or the people who have a say in it. As I said earlier, in a year when the experts gave fans such a hard time for voting in John Scott as an All-Star (which ended up being one of the best things for the league this year), it baffles me to see stuff like this coming from the so called “experts”. Either they are voting for the teams they have roots with, or they are just being completely ignorant to markets that aren’t making headlines in their journalistic eyes.

I can’t go through each awful vote after each awful vote. Karlsson should have won the Norris, Gostisbehere’s impact on an entire teams season should have easily won him the Calder, and even P.K Subban’s net contributions and time spent at local children’s hospitals was overlooked for the NHL Foundation Player Award.

I can’t say I really know how to fix this issue. One idea is to have the PHWA elect the nominee’s and then leave the final decisions to the fans. But even with this, you have a certain degree of bias with fans voting for hometown players or rivals voting against the deserving player. But at least with this system, we would have a peace of mind that there is no agenda (mainly marketing) involved.

Well, that’s my first rant of the summer. Hopefully Ron Hextall and the Flyers make good decisions this weekend in Buffalo at the draft to cool me down a bit from this issue (cough cough trade up for the 4th with Edmonton cough cough). Here’s a full list of the 2016 NHL Award Winners – but take it with a grain of salt, coverage of the draft starts tomorrow.