LAS VEGAS, Nev. - A few prominent Vancouver Canucks got their hands on some hardware at the NHL awards, but it didn't do much to ease the pain left by the trophy that got away.
Daniel Sedin took home the Ted Lindsay Award as the players' MVP, Ryan Kesler won the Selke Trophy as the league's top defensive forward and Mike Gillis was named the general manager of the year during the NHL awards show on Wednesday night.
"I'm honoured to win this award but I'd trade it in any minute for the Stanley Cup," said Gillis. "I don't think any of us have kind of had an opportunity to fully decompress from what happened and understand it. It's great, but I want to win the Stanley Cup."
It's only been a week since the Canucks were beaten 4-0 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final by the Boston Bruins. They were reminded of that when Boston's Tim Thomas and Zdeno Chara carried the coveted trophy on stage during the awards show, getting the biggest applause of the night from the crowd at The Palms.
Sedin failed to secure both of the league's MVP awards — he finished second to Anaheim's Corey Perry in media voting for the Hart Trophy after winning the Ted Lindsay Award selected by his peers.
A year ago, his twin brother Henrik won the Hart and finished second to Alex Ovechkin for the Ted Lindsay.
Kesler finally got his hands on the Selke after being a finalist for the award on two other occasions. He led all NHL forwards in blocked shots with 80 and set personal bests in faceoff percentage and scoring.
"Everything kind of happened for me this year — 41 goals and to win the Selke is a season I'll never forget," said Kesler. "It's nice to get acknowledged. I guess all those years my dad was yelling 'backcheck' at me finally paid off."
The Canucks received the most nominations of any team following the best regular season in team history. In addition to the trophy wins by Luongo and Kesler, goaltender Roberto Luongo finished third in voting for the Vezina Trophy behind Thomas.
Some of the other winners included:
— Carolina Hurricanes forward Jeff Skinner took home the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year.
— Tampa Bay Lightning winger Martin St. Louis won his second straight Lady Byng Trophy as the league's most gentlemanly player.
— Dan Bylsma of the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year.
The awards show was held in Las Vegas for the third straight year and included a mixture of pop culture and hockey. One of the more amusing moments saw Bylsma receive his trophy from entertainer Donny Osmond.
"This is my first chance to get an award like this, of this magnitude," said Bylsma. "I didn't picture Donny Osmond being the guy who announces it. Once I found out it was Donny, I had a couple jokes that I thought about saying but 45 seconds wasn't enough."
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