Breaking down the top candidates for the Calder Trophy
We're about halfway through the NHL season at this point, and as such it feels like the right time to take a look at the current leaders for the league's various awards.
Over the next several articles, we'll examine the 10 leading candidates for each of the major awards. Today, we'll look at the Calder Trophy, given to the best rookie in the NHL.
Now, this is always a tough award when it comes to cooking up 10 guys who have any kind of legitimate shot, because it's usually one or two, sometimes three guys who really differentiate themselves from the other rookies in any kind of meaningful way. This season, unfortunately for much of the field, is little different.
Let's take a look at the 10 most likely candidates (presented in alphabetical order):
Yaroslav Askarov, G, San Jose Sharks
I have to be honest right out of the gate here: Askarov is not going to get serious consideration as the winner of this award right now. That's both because of the sample size, the fact that he's probably gonna lose a lot the rest of the way, there's arguably a better option at this position, and the actual best candidate for the Calder at the halfway point is on his team.
That said, if he keeps up the pace he's put together through his first handful of appearances, in which he's posted one of the best save percentages in the league, it's gonna open a lot of options for voters. That's a hard pace to maintain even for the most veteran of goaltenders on much better teams, but his ceiling is obviously high and he's going to face a lot of shots. So full marks for a great start and hope for more to come, but right now, here's "only" one of the five or so best rookies in the league, with runway to chase off the "sample size" talk.
Jackson Blake, RW, Carolina Hurricanes
Blake is another player who's off to a very good start, with the fourth-most goals and best underlying numbers of any rookie.
However, he probably doesn't have the "complete" candidacy of some of the other guys on this list because he doesn't get much power-play time and his team is too deep for even an injury or two to let him get those kinds of looks. The fact is that the Hurricanes need to play their most productive veterans every night and for as good a rookie as Blake is, he's probably not going as much opportunity to outshine them as other rookies on worse teams would.
Still, a great start and one worthy of some recognition, especially because he's the only rookie on the team.
Macklin Celebrini, C, San Jose Sharks
No surprise here: Celebrini is your clubhouse leader for the Calder halfway through the season.
Even an early injury has not been enough to slow his production, or the hype train around the most recent first-overall pick.
It seems like half the games he plays, there's some quote from an awestruck opponent who talks glowingly about how Celebrini is a future star in this league, accompanied by a highlight of him doing something 95 percent of NHLers with 10 times as many career games couldn't dream of.
While his underlying numbers aren't good and the Sharks get outscored while he's on the ice, no one is expecting the Sharks to be competitive and thus voters won't hold that against him. Especially if the highlights and goals keep coming at the same rate.
Cutter Gauthier, LW, Anaheim Ducks
With Gauthier in the mix here, all three of last year's Hobey Baker finalists are in the top 10 for the Calder at this point in the season. That's gotta be pretty rare.
He hasn't shown quit the goalscoring flash as he did in college, but he's adjusted to the pro game well. Here, too, you'd like to see better underlying numbers, but he's producing at a very strong rate among his peers despite shooting only about 6 percent. We can expect that number to come up, given his track record as a deadly scorer, and if it does, he can make an even stronger case for himself in the second half.
Emil Heineman, LW, Montreal Canadiens
While his production among rookie's is on the lower end of the top 10, consider that Heineman already has nine goals despite getting relatively few minutes overall, let alone on the power play, where he has impressive per-hour production despite relatively little use.
His defensive game needs improvement, and he probably won't get a ton of serious consideration if he continues to get fewer offensive opportunities than a lot of the other guys on this list. But if he's up around the rookie top-three in goals at the end of the season, the only other real concern would be vote-splitting with his teammate…
Lane Hutson, LD, Montreal Canadiens
Speaking of highlights, Hutson seems to provide them on a nightly basis, and is being given every opportunity to strut his stuff in just about all high-end situations.
His offensive numbers aren't just great for a rookie defenseman, they're great for a rookie, period, or a defenseman, period. He's scoring in roughly the same ballpark as guys who have won Norrises before, and he's not even 21 yet.
Now, that all elides the fact that he's kinda poor defensively in comparison with those guys, but whatever, he's still a rookie. Also, his team isn't very good, so it's not like he's a black hole while the rest of the team is playing winning hockey. If the defensive resultsimprove even a little bit in the second half, Hutson could make a serious case for himself as the Calder winner. Even now, he's comfortably top-three for me.
Matveil Michkov, RW, Philadelphia Flyers
Michkov is the other clear top-three guy. Everything you see from him speaks for itself and the first 30ish games of the season were especially impressive.
But what that means is he's hit a bit of a slump lately, and his coach recently benched him for a third period and said "the schedule" of being in the NHL is hampering him a bit. Maybe that's a conditioning thing, maybe that's a usage thing, but if he can find that next gear again, look out. On the other hand, if healthy scratches start happening here and there, his candidacy could drop off slightly even if the rest of his game returns to form.
Everything about his game, when it's going right, speaks for itself. Awesome player. Barring disaster, I'd expect him to be, at worst, third or fourth in voting at year's end.
Logan Stankoven, C, Dallas Stars
Stankoven is a bit like Blake — another rookie who's producing a lot on a very competitive team.
Which means that, also like Blake, he's not getting a ton of high-leverage offensive opportunities. But he's making the most of his middling ice time, as he's playing less than 16 minutes a night.
The way things are shaping up right now, if some wiggle room in the top three opens up for any reason, Stankoven feels like he's ready to step into it. He actually does get a decent amount of power-play time for a rookie but almost all of his scoring is at 5-on-5, and his shooting percentage is quite low, at under 5 percent.
So there's a lot of potential for growth here, and saying that about a guy who's fifth in rookie scoring right now tells you a lot about what he brings to the table.
Maxim Tsyplakov, RW, New York Islanders
Speaking of some of the highest-scoring rookies, Tsyplakov comes in at No. 4 right now, but is a fair shout behind the top three. Moreover, his shooting percentage is extremely high.
But he's a really active shooter, who gets to dangerous areas, and despite the high scoring efficiency, is actually underperforming his personal expected-goals rate (north of 10, and second-best among rookies). He's also getting the second-most ice time of all first-year players, and since scoring rates are highly correlated with TOI, we can reasonably expect something like this pace to continue.
I think in the end, he probably doesn't end up in the top three, in part because he doesn't have the level of hype some other rookies do, but he has a really strong argument to be top-five by the end of the regular season.
Dustin Wolf, G, Calgary Flames
It's not that often rookie goaltenders get serious Calder consideration, in large part because their own teams don't use them all that much.
Not so this year with Wolf in Calgary. He's splitting time and has clearly proven himself as the 1a, to such an extent that he should probably just be the outright No. 1 if the wear and tear of a full NHL season weren't a little worrisome for his long-term outlook.
He's one of the best goalies in the league and certainly the best rookie netminder right now. Askarov might show some closing speed in the second half but Wolf's games-played advantage is probably going to be enough to hold him off, unless the stress of playing 40ish NHL games this year catches up with him. If not, we're talking about a goalie who not only posted great numbers, but probably also got a non-competitive team back into the playoff conversation.
Calder trophy midseason ranking
With all of the above having been said, here's how I would rank the 10 players listed here in terms of likelihood to win the Calder, based on both performance to this point and the odds they continue or improve on their current situations in the second half:
- Macklin Celebrini
- Matvei Michkov
- Lane Hutson
- Dustin Wolf
- Logan Stankoven
- Maxim Tsyplakov
- Emil Heineman
- Jackson Blake
- Cutter Gauthier
- Yaroslav Askarov
