NHL Nhl Awards

The NHL handed out its annual awards on Thursday, recognizing the best performances in the league this year. After the jump, the full list of winners from the ceremony in Las Vegas.

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.

It takes a special player to get paid a lot of money. In the salary cap era, you expect guys who are signed to big-money deals to produce. When they disappear into the Witness Protection Program, it's usually a notable occurrence. With that said, we present nominees for the 2008-2009 Witness Protection Award, and boy do we have some options to pick from.

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.

It's designed to maintain competitive balance and parity across the league, but if you waste valuable salary cap space on free agents that don't pan out or contribute the way you expected, you're pretty much stuck without a paddle because nobody is going to bail you out and take that albatross contract off your hands.

Introducing the FanHouse nominees for the Wade Redden Award for Wasted Cap Space.

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.

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.

During the 2007-08 season, Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Vesa Toskala made blooper reels across the NHL for allowing a goal against the New York Islanders from 190 feet away. Hey, it happens to the best of them, and just to prove it, we introduce you to the 2008-09 nominees for the Vesa Toskala Award, celebrating the worst goal allowed of the year.

The Conn Smythe Trophy has been handed out since 1965. It's given to the most valuable player of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

In 2009, this was not an easy decision. There were plenty of viable candidates on both of the finalists, the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins. Though five players have won the Conn Smythe while playing for the team that lost the Finals, this was not a year for that to happen.

Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin have already claimed a Hart Trophy in their young NHL careers as league MVP, while the only member of the new big three to not take home the hardware is Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin. Is this the year? Or will Ovechkin claim his second in a row?

The NHL announced the finalists for the award on Wednesday, as Detroit's Pavel Datsyuk joins Malkin and Ovechkin in the top three.

If Detroit Red Wings center Pavel Datsyuk is going to claim his second straight Selke Trophy as the league's best defensive forward, he's going to have to overcome two excellent players in Philadelphia's Mike Richards and Vancouver's Ryan Kesler.

Regarded as one of the top defensive players in the game, Datsyuk finished second with 89 takeaways, trailing only Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin, who finished with 94. It's the first time in two years that Datsyuk has not led the league in that category, while he was also credited with 33 blocked shots and won over 56 percent of his faceoffs.

Aside from helping lead his team to the postseason for the first time in franchise history, Columbus Blue Jackets goalie Steve Mason has an opportunity to take home some serious hardware at the NHL's award ceremony in June. After being named as one of the finalists for the Calder Trophy as the top rookie, the 20-year-old Mason is also a nominee for the Vezina Trophy as the league's top goaltender. Joining Mason as finalists are Boston's Tim Thomas and Minnesota's Niklas Backstrom.

According to John McGourty of NHL.com, the only players to win both the Calder and Vezina in the same season are Tom Barrasso, Ed Belfour, Tony Esposito and Frankie Brimsek.