2022-23 NHL Superlatives

Welcome to the yearly 2022-23 NHL Superlatives Awards as brought to you by Talent Alone. Similar to your high school yearbook, we choose some of the people who exceeded (or fell far short) the rest of the class.

Mike: As much as it pains me to say this, The Boston Bruins are the obvious winner. They set an NHL record with 65 wins and only lost in regulation 12 times. They had an unreal 34-4-3 home record, which bodes well for them considering they’ll have home-ice advantage for the entire playoffs. While Pastranak’s 60 goals and the rest of the forward group get a lot of much-deserved attention, I cannot talk enough about how good this team is defensively. Hampus Lindholm and Matt Grzelcyk sit atop the league with a 5v5 on-ice goal differential of 41 and 40 apiece. The scary part is, they aren’t even paired together on the ice. Couple that with Linus Ullmark going god mode this season and it truly appears that it is their cup to lose this year. 

Adam: Yup. No real 2 ways about it. Boston is the top dog at the table. Give them their steak and send them to the yard. I think I mixed my metaphors too much.

Most Disappointing

Mike: The Calgary Flames thought they were smart. With Gaudreau out the door and Tkachuk having no intentions of resigning, they thought they avoided trouble when they traded Tkachuk for Huberdeau. Turns out the smart one was the Panthers. A year removed from putting up 115 pts Huberdeau put up only 55 for the Flames and didn’t look like the same player. Despite how the team looked on paper, they never got it together. I really feel for Flames fans as their team forced them to endure 17 losses by a single goal. On top of that, they have to deal all off-season with the memory of Darryl Sutter sending out Nick Ritchie in the shootout that ended their playoff hopes.

Adam: Calling Jack Campbell a disappointment might not be perfectly accurate. It feels like (almost) everyone kind of expected him to fall back to earth but the drop-off was immense.

2021-22 Jack Campbell: .914 sv%, 2.64 GAA, -2.3 GSAE

2022-23 Jack Campbell: .888 sv%, 3.41 GAA, –18.3 GSAE

Feel like the Oilers probably started to regret the fresh 5-year deal by November 10th

Most Fun to Watch

Mike: There are some people who will say I’m making a homer pick here, and they are absolutely right. The most fun team to watch this year was indeed the Buffalo Sabres. After spending a decade in the dark and dealing with the drama of a disgruntled star the Sabres have finally come back to life. The team is overflowing with young talented players and they managed to make a huge leap this year that had them playing meaningful hockey all the way till the end of the season. They were top five in goals for this season with 293. They were also bottom 7 in goals against at 297, but that just adds to the most fun argument. High scoring, back and forward, no lead was safe. This season raised my blood pressure to dangerous levels but it was one hell of a ride.  Besides, what’s more fun than watching a 6’6” center with silky mitts do stuff like this?

Adam: Definitely a homer pick there. It’s nuts to choose anyone besides the Oilers. 50 wins, 153 Points for McDavid (not to mention winning his 3rd Hart), 63% of their games hitting the over this season, and Stuart Skinner making a just-too-late Caldar push. Hell, Edmonton even ended up with 3 players over 100 points and I bet you just learned that upon reading this.

Mike: I’m glad you mentioned McDavid because it reminded me to mention something very interesting. Did you know that Tage Thompson, Jeff Skinner, Alex Tuch, Rasmus Dahlin, and Dylan Cozens all had more points this season than Jack Eichel?  This “Did You Know” was brought to you by Bitterness and Spite.

The “Lou Lamoriello” Award for most boring team to watch

Mike: It’s okay for a team to be bad but fun, or to be good but boring. It’s never okay though to be bad and boring, and that’s exactly what the Philadelphia Flyers were. The Flyers hired John Torterella as head coach in the offseason and oh boy did this team go full Tortz while averaging a snooze inducing 2.65 goals per 60. At least when teams tank it becomes a flaming dumpster speeding down a hill that you can’t stop staring at, but flyers weren’t even that. They were bad, but not bad enough. The icing on top of the boring sunday is they didn’t even have any exciting players that would make me want to watch a Flyers game. Maybe that could’ve been Travis Koneckny had he not been hurt so often.  I can already hear someone in Philly screaming at their computer about how Joel Farabee is the next Bernie Nicholls.

Adam: I’m personally amazed you wrote 150 words on the Flyers and ended it with Bernie Nicholls.

I’m going to go a different route. The most boring team is the Carolina Hurricanes. Their top scorer was Marty Necas and he barely cracked the NHL top 50 for points this year. They shot 34.78 shots a game and allow a league low 26 shots a game. They basically turned all of their opponents all season into the Arizona Cyotes and who wants to watch 82 games of the Arizona Cyotes except Gary Bettman.

The crystal ball

Mike: Most goalies don’t hit their stride till around their mid 20’s. It’s not out of the ordinary for even the most touted Goalie prospect to spend time in the AHL. None of this however applies to Devon Levi. Buffalo Sabres fans got a taste of Levi at the end of the season, and I got news for you, he won’t be spending a single game in Rochester next season. The 21 showed unreal poise and proved he’s ready for the NHL. That is why, when I look into my crystal ball I see only one thing that’s for sure next season and it follows a storied history. In 1984 Tom Barrasso of the Buffalo Sabres became the youngest goalie ever to win the Vezina at the age of 18. From 1994 to 1999 Dominik Hasek won 5 Vezina trophies while playing in Buffalo. Most recently, in 2010 the greatest US born goalie of all time, Ryan Miller, won the Vezina as a Sabre. And at the end of next season, in 2024, Devon Levi will join his fellow Buffalo Netminders in bringing home the trophy as the NHL’s best goalie. Get your bet slips in now.

Adam: Another homer pick eh? Well I’m going the rookie route too. When I look into my crystal ball I see “Adam Fantilli, 2nd overall pick, wins Calder Trophy”

Its pretty simple, a lottery is random. What if Ottowa comes in 2nd in the lottery? Suddenly Adam Fantilli is playing on a line with Alex Debrincat and has his own power play unit. What if Arizona wins the lotter? Who would Connor Bedard even be playing with? No one on earth has that information. I rest my case

Also this

Best goal

Adam: GOALIE GOOOOOOOOOOOAL

Mike: Yeah goalie goals are cool. But you know what’s really cool? A team stealing the puck and executing perfect tape to tape passes on the rush en route to a goal.

Tic-Tuch-Tage bitches!