FanHouse NHL Awards: Pavel Datsyuk Award for Shootout Creativity

The real NHL awards will be handed out Thursday night in Las Vegas, so FanHouse decided to hand out its own special awards for the 2008-09 season.

While there are still many folks firmly planted on both the pro and con sides of the shootout debate, I think one thing that everyone can agree on is that the skill competition does produce some amazing highlight reel goals. Today, I have the pleasure of unveiling the FanHouse nominees for the best shootout goal of the 2008-09 season.

Linus Omark, Sweden: Since these awards are focused on the NHL, the Swedish Elite League's Linus Omark is ineligible, but no year end shootout compilation would be complete without his chip shot shootout goal from earlier this season. During a friendly against Switzerland, the young Swede scored one of the most unique shootout goals that I've seen in a long time.

Video: Omark's chip shot

Alex Ovechkin, Eastern Conference All-Stars: Naturally, the league's goal-scoring champion found his way onto a countdown of great goals. This season, Ovechkin put on another memorable All-Star performance during the shootout competition. It's probably most memorable for his use of props, and as the only nominee on our countdown to use two sticks.

Video: Ovechkin's All-Star Shootout

Niklas Hagman, Toronto Maple Leafs: One of the more unique plays of the season was Niklas Hagman's goal on Martin Brodeur. That's due to the fact that Brodeur took a face full of snow on the play and, well, he wasn't too happy about that. It's hard to blame him for being a bit peeved about it, but the goal still counted.

Video: Hagman snows on Broduer

Martin St. Louis, Tampa Bay Lightning: OK, so we've seen lots of spin-o-ramas. Hagman showed us how to stop on a dime. But how about skating backwards? That's exactly what Marty St. Louis did against the Coyotes.

Video: The St. Louis Shuffle

Pavel Datsyuk, Detroit Red Wings: When it comes to shootouts Detroit's Datsyuk is one of the best (the award's named after him, after all) and his signature move is almost unstoppable. This year, he unleashed his triple deke -- heck, I don't know, there may be more dekes in there -- on Minnesota's Josh Harding. The result was, well, unstoppable.

Video: Datsyuk's Signature Move

And the winner of the Pavel Datsyuk Award for Shootout Creativity is...

Mike Ribeiro, Dallas Stars: This year Ribiero had two spectacular goals in the extra session. The first of which is your winner for FanHouse's NHL Shootout Goal of the year, while the second is a bonus video.