My boy Lemo’s last season in the J has not been easy. In fact he has fallen far from his great numbers of last season when he won the SMJHL championship with the Anchorage Armada. He was then actually nominated for two awards (best defensive forward and most underrated player), but sadly both ended up eluding him. But at some point during that last season Lemo discovered that he was in fact the only guy in the league’s top-70 in points that had received absolutely no powerplay time whatsoever. And when he finished the season 47th on that list with 39 points, and leading his own team in plus-minus with a similar +39, he thought of coining for himself the moniker ‘even-strength specialist’. So this is what I will propose here. While the terms ‘powerplay specialist’ and ‘penalty kill specialist’ are pretty common, not enough credit sometimes goes to the guys who are at their best at even strength, which ideally comprises the most of any hockey game. So not to be confused with Best Defensive Forward the ‘Even-strength specialist’ should go to the guy that has the best all-round stats without the benefit of any powerplay time and is intended perhaps to celebrate more the offensive output of those unassuming two-way workhorses of the middle-six than the flashy scoring dynamos or the gritty bottom line grinders. And Lemo would have been a shoo-in for it last season. Hopefully he’ll show the same kind of effectiveness also in the SHL soon enough as well!