June 14, 2007
Learn To Love Lady Byng
One of the things I love about hockey and the NHL is the respect the game still has for its history -- something that's reflected in the names of the post season awards it hands out every June.
It doesn't matter what name you hear, every time there are echoes of the early years of the game in North America and a reverence for all of the tradition: Hart, Calder, Norris, Adams, Vezina, Masterson, Pearson and Selke.
But for some reason, there's one trophy that doesn't get its due, and that's the Lady Byng, the trophy awarded annually to the NHL player who best exemplifies sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct with high performance of play. In recent years, the Byng most often gets awarded to a player who piles up a of points, but doesn't spend a lot of time in the penalty box. Unfortunately, that means that many Byng winners are often accused of being soft.
In 2003, eventual winner Alexander Mogilny actually skipped the post season awards show because he didn't think much of the trophy.
But in a league that too often turns the other way when players like Chris Neil and Jordin Tootoo show disrespect for their opponents and the game with a style of play which is meant to not merely disrupt, but to injure, I think the Lady Byng might be more important than ever.
Here's Detroit Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock:
"Being the best is something to make fun of?" asked Babcock, after [Pavel] Datsyuk was again named for the award back in May, during the playoffs. "I don't understand that thought process."
[...]
In Babcock's view, many of the players who belittle the Lady Byng are possibly a little jealous of the entire matter.
"It's a fantastic award. It's like the Presidents' Trophy," Babcock said of the award given to the team with the best regular season-record (the Buffalo Sabres edged the Wings out to win it this season). "All the teams that don't win it can make fun of it."
Even better, the Lady Byng, Marie Evelyn Moreton, who donated the award along with her husband, was an actual fan of the original Ottawa Senators. The first time the Byng was awarded wasn't in a ceremony from a podium, but personally from the lady herself when she asked original winner Frank Nighbor if the league would accept the donation of a trophy to be awarded to the most sportsmanlike player. When he said yes, Byng named him the first winner right there and then.
This year the nominees are Detroit's Pavel Datsyuk, Colorado's Joe Sakic and Tampa Bay's Martin St. Louis. My choice: St. Louis, a player nobody could ever accuse of being soft, bringing honor to the game and its history with every shift he skates and doing it without fear in a sport where he will always be physically outmatched by larger opponents.
Lady Byng would be proud. And so should you.
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Great post. It's actually my favorite award the NHL gives out (beyond the conn smythe and the cup itself). I feel like it speaks not only to a player's sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct, but also their strong defensive play. Take a look at someone like Jay Pandolfo. Great defensive player and very few penalties.
Posted by:
at June 14, 2007 07:19 PM
It doesn't matter what name you hear, every time there are echoes of the early years of the game in North America and a reverence for all of the tradition
Which is why the renaming of the divisions and conferences a few years back was so lame.
Posted by:
at June 20, 2007 12:06 PM
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