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SMJHL AWARDS ANNOUNCEMENT: (Re)naming Part 2
#1
(This post was last modified: 10-25-2020, 01:14 PM by hhh81.)

Hi all, it is your friendly neighborhood SMJHL Awards Head here. As I said a season or two ago, there would be another round of changes/updates to SMJHL Awards to build off the first set I shared back in July. Today is the day; I bring you four award names, three for our new awards last year and one renaming of an ongoing award from the earliest days of the league.

If you'd like to read more about how we got here, you can look at my SMJHL Award Naming Research Project and my last SMJHL Awards Update.

I now present, for your consideration: SMJHL Award Updates 2: Electric Tigaloo.

Tom Corcoran Trophy: Best Goalie
For a very long time, the best goalie has been named after Tom Corcoran, a goalie legend of the early days of the site. He won a bunch of individual awards during his career (S6-S13) including the McBride, Khan, and Honcho, and was a finalist for the Richan and Mexico as well. He’s a Hall of Famer in the S20 class off the back of his 216 career wins, 22 shutouts, solid individual numbers, and the Challenge Cup that evaded him until his final season.

When I started considering updating awards, I know this was the #1 award that would change. That’s to take nothing from Corcoran; there’s a reason he’s a Hall of Famer. However, there is an SMJHL player who, without question, should be a first ballot SMJHL Hall of Famer if such a thing existed. This player played four years in the SMJHL, compiling 99 career wins, 11 shutouts, and a 0.900 save percentage (old indexes compile goals against average funny and I don’t have the energy to recalculate season by season). Through all those individual stats, he was a finalist for the Corcoran all four seasons winning in S42, S44, and S45. The only reason he didn’t also win the Anrikkanen in S42 is several members of the committee figured, because his stats were so good, there’s no way he was a rookie. No one else has ever won three Corcorans, and I doubt it’s a feat we’ll see matched again.

It’s my honor to announce that, starting in S56, the Best Goalie award will be the Cedric Robinson Trophy. Congratulations @grok

Highest Team Save Percentage by a Goalie Tandem Award
This was one of the three new awards we introduced last year. I got the feedback some goalies felt like there wasn’t as much opportunity for recognition as there is for skaters; the SHL has both the Best Goalie (McBride) as well as the fewest goals against (Honcho). We introduced the highest team save percentage to give another recognition piece, and something we don’t vote on like the Hanson, Martucci, and O’Keefe trophies.

When it came down to it, we really only seriously considered two goalies for this award: Matt Lewis-Flood and Jason Aittokallio. Both were in the running for wildly different reasons, and both had strong arguments and supports among the committee.

Aittokallio was in the running in large part to off-ice reasons. JayWhy was a very long time simmer for the league, and has been Manhattan GM since S39. JY is as close to a fixture on the site as there is (he was even awarded the Vidrik Onoprienko Trophy for Lifetime Achievement in S39. Why Jason over Jakub, I hear you ask? Simple: Jakub never played in the SMJHL (according to Bojobox) and Jason had two very good seasons in the J. In 91 career games, he had 60 wins (60-21-8), 5 shutouts, a 0.904 SV%, and a 2.27 GAA* with Kelowna in S30 & S31. Very impressive numbers in any era!

Our second “finalist” so to speak is Matt Lewis-Flood. He was already on my short list prior to the public nomination process, and then got a nomination from a site user. That nomination said it well:
“The Lewis-Flood award goes to the top Goalie Tandem. what better than to name it after a goalie with two names? Matt Lewis-Flood has so many awards under his belt.
S27: Elias Armia Trophy, Raymond Lindsay Trophy, Tom Corcoran Trophy
S28: Raymond Lindsay Trophy, Ideen Fallah Trophy, Tom Corcoran Trophy.”

Indeed, anonymous person on the Internet! MLF had a very strong SMJHL career, playing four years with Montreal from S26-S29. He was an average to below-average backup as a rookie before breaking out in S27. In three years as starter, he won a whopping 69.8% of his games, going 88-23-10 with 13 shutouts. MLF was a force of nature, leading him to win a bunch of awards (including back-to-back Corcorans AND Lindsays). It’s rare to see a goalie be that dominant, but MLF was. He finished with a 0.908 SV% for his career, but if you rule out his awful rookie season, MLF had a 0.910 SV%. Suffice to say, he was a really good J player.

This was a challenging choice. Both have very strong merits to have a league award named after them. MLF is one of the all-time SMJHL greats, and JayWhy absolutely deserves something named after his grumpy old man ass Wink. In the end the committee decided that the Top Team Save Percentage Award will be known as…..

The Matt Lewis-Flood Trophy. Congrats @RainDelay !

Most Improved Player
We awarded this for the first time last season (congrats again Mats Marner), and had a few ideas on who we’d ultimately name this award after. This was an award shaped the most by the public nomination process. We had two nominations for this award (put forth by the people themselves), for past greats of the SMJHL and SHL. Thank you to @JSS and @Zoone16 for the self-nominations. While we considered a few other players (most notably Matt Lewis-Flood) for this award, the committee came to a conclusion pretty quickly regarding these nominations and our own short list.

Alex Light came into the SMJHL in S30 with Kelowna, and had an okay rookie season (15 points playing 3rd line minutes). He exploded out of the gate as a sophomore, improving to 26 goals and 54 points (and then followed that with a 34 goal, 63-point campaign). His likely Hall of Fame caliber SHL career is not germane here, but worth at least a passing mention. Zoone will never let any of us forget about it anyway. Light holds the record for most shots on goal in a season during the STHS era (239) and still holds the all-time goals record in a season with 34 in S32. Some others, both in the 425 STHS era and the FHM era, have come close, but no player has scored more goals in a season. I didn’t realize this prior to my typing this up, but that’s pretty cool.

Light was a back-to-back Martucci winner as top goal scorer, and even picked up the S31 Brandon Holmes trophy. He also was a two-time finalist for the Fallah, falling short in both S31 and S32. Beyond that Zoone, has been a fixture around the SMJHL for a long time now. He predated me as SMJHL Awards Head and introduced the Rookie of the Year trophy. He's also been a long time media head for both leagues at various times, and was previously Head GM for Kelowna (I actually helped hire him as a widdle rookie intern!)

The second player we considered was Flacko Lagerfield of Detroit, Buffalo, Tampa Bay, and Hamilton fame. 10 seasons after Light did his things, Flacko hit the SMJHL with Detroit (S40). Similarly to Light, he played three seasons in the J. His first season was an up and down campaign where he played top six minutes for the Falcons, producing a decent 14 goals and 25 points. In JSS’s own words, Lagerfield “kicks it up a notch in his rookie season playoffs and manages to go a PPG and bring Detroit to the finals and then continues his hot streak next season with 56 points which was top 3 in the league iicr.”

After some research, I can confirm Lagerfield did go over a point per game (17 points in 15 games) in the S40 playoffs as Detroit made the finals, only to get swept by Kelowna. His performance did win him a nomination for the Witzel as well as got him the Ronan O’Keefe (playoff scoring leader). He was a finalist for the Anrikkanen, falling just short of his prize. The next season, Lagerfield was among the scoring leaders, finishing third behind Colorado’s Mattias Enqvist (57 points) and Kolja Seppanen of Vancouver (63 points). This was good enough to be a Fallah finalist. Indeed, Lagerfield had a large jump from his first season to his second, before Seeing a 21-point regression in his final SMJHL campaign (17 goals, 35 points). He went on to have a very fascinating and controversial SHL career. I will not touch on that here, and leave it to the Hall of Fame Committee to rule on that.

In the end, we came to a consensus pretty quickly. From this day on, the Most Improved Player award will be the Alex Light Trophy. If we were renaming the Martucci at this time, he likely would have gotten that instead as a two-time winner.

Best Defensive Defenseman
This was the third and final new award I introduced last season (and the first we thought up). I think it was a great move on the SHL’s part to introduce the Bojo Biscuit, so the selection of naming for this one felt really important. Honestly, 90% of why I asked for public nominations for naming these awards was to give us ideas for who to name it after. Unfortunately, we got close to zero nominations for this award, making our jobs a little more challenging.

There are plenty of greats from SHL past that could filter into here—Alonzo Garbanzo and Ludwig Koch Schroder stand out the most for that (their singular seasons in the J would not qualify for this award by any stretch, though). However, we didn’t want to just pick an SHL great for this award; we wanted to recognize someone who truly excelled in the SMJHL, as it is an SMJHL award. In short, SHL production plays a part, but it’s far from the most important thing we consider.

We discussed a few names, with a group of three really raising to the top. This list includes two of the all-time greats in the SHL--one who has set several league records that may never be matched and another who put together two very strong all around seasons in the J before going onto an SHL career spanning 21 years over three decades of the site--and then a player who put together one of the most dominant SMJHL seasons for a defenseman ever at both ends of the ice before a decent journeyman SHL career. Unfortunately, the STHS era indexes provide a pretty limited view of “defensive stats.”

Our first “finalist” so to speak, was the previously named Alonzo Garbanzo @ArGarBarGar. The blueliner played all 24 of his SHL seasons with Minnesota, and absolutely stuffed the record books. He is 4th in career scoring (973), tied for 3rd in games played (1208), 7th in hits (2587), 1st in blocks (1882), 2nd in minutes played (30,960), 1st in power play points (281). Those aren’t just considering defenseman, that’s everyone. He has a 234 block lead on second place, a staggering number. While the switch to FHM likely will see that record surpassed (possibly by Nat Emerson or Mathias Seger), no one can touch his numbers from the STHS era. However, Garbanzo’s SMJHL career doesn’t really measure up. He played a single season with Montreal in S20, in a largely offensive role. It wasn’t until he reached the SHL that his defensive game really took hold.

Our second finalist is in many ways Garbanzo’s contemporary. Alexis Metzler played his entire 21 seasons in the SHL with Buffalo, the majority of which as captain. Unlike Garbanzo, Metzler did have a pretty solid SMJHL career. In two seasons with the Detroit Falcons, Metzler compiled back-to-back 30 point seasons playing over 21 minutes per night. He played about 15% of his minutes shorthanded, and contributed in every phase of the game. While he wasn’t a hit or block machine, his 59 hits and 74 blocks in S31 were still quite decent. During this era, most top earning players only would play 1-2 seasons in the SMJHL before getting called up, leading to much lower career juniors numbers for players like Metzler, Garbanzo, etc. At the conclusion of his SHL career, Metzler was third all-time in blocked shots (1529), 57th in hits (1578), and 11th in minutes played (24,235). Additionally, Metzler finished 15th in career shorthanded minutes (2376), ahead of Garbanzo (one of the few areas where the American surpassed Garbanzo’s numbers).

Our third finalist is the captian for life himself, @Troy_McClure03. Troy McClure III jumped onto the list for a number of reasons—he was always angled as more of a defensive defenseman, but could put up some points when necessary. He put up decent numbers as a third-pairing defender in S41 (16 points, +3, 62 hits, 48 shots blocked) with Colorado. His S42 MVP season is what cemented him. McClure recorded 125 hits and 82 blocks in over 21 minutes per game (15.6% shorthanded) for the Raptors, along with a very impressive 10-36-46 offensive stat line. As he continued into the SHL, McClure grew into an elite two-way gritty force for the Winnipeg Jets before being traded to Los Angeles in S52. Since then, McClure has been a journeyman picking up minutes for a variety of teams. He was tied for 53rd all-time in career blocked shots (931) after S55, and keeps going—after the current season, he’ll be in the top 40 all time, breaking 1000 blocks. In complete honesty, this was my personal vote for our best choice. It’s so rare to see an SMJHL defenseman not only get votes but WIN the Ideen Fallah, and McClure did just that in S42 on the back of an amazing all-around season.

After much discussion, a majority of the committee decided that Metzler’s combination of long-term and sustained excellence and better juniors numbers gave him the edge over Garbanzo and McClure. I’m proud to announce that the Best Defensive Defenseman Award will now be known as the Alexis Metzler Trophy. A likely unexpected congrats to @Avakael.

That’s it! Those are the new award names starting in S56! Leave your salt in the comment section below!

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#2
(This post was last modified: 10-25-2020, 01:23 PM by ACapitalChicago.)

Great work, can't wait to see these awarded in the future!

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#3

Popcorn

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#4

It is done.

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#5

oh shit

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Thank you all for the amazing sigs & player cards
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3. Buffalo Stampede , Eduard Selich 5 (Maximilian Wachter, Alexis Metzler) at 16:25
5. Buffalo Stampede , Eduard Selich 6 (Steven Stamkos Jr., Brynjar Tusk) at 19:48
8. Buffalo Stampede , Eduard Selich 7 (Brynjar Tusk, Alexis Metzler) at 13:55
9. Buffalo Stampede , Eduard Selich 8 (Anton Fedorov, Mikelis Grundmanis) at 15:12
10. Buffalo Stampede , Eduard Selich 9 (Dickie Pecker) at 19:43 (Empty Net)
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#6

buffalo is infectious

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#7

Man this is a huge fucking honor. Those first four J seasons are some of my best memories on the site and it makes me so happy to see them immortalized on the GOTY award


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#8

10-25-2020, 12:06 PMhhh81 Wrote: Hi all, it is your friendly neighborhood SMJHL Awards Head here. As I , Lagerfield went on to have a very fascinating and controversial SHL career. I will not touch on that here, and leave it to the Hall of Fame Committee to rule on that.

curious as to why Lagerfields career is controversial Eyebrow

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#9

Absolutely honored to have an award named after my player in the J. Congrats to everyone else that got an award named after them. <3

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#10

Cale Amundsen - 100 Career wins (1st)

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#11

Congrats all, especially grok!

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#12

Congrats to everyone who had an award named after them and everyone who was considered!

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#13

10-25-2020, 01:32 PMJSS Wrote:
10-25-2020, 12:06 PMhhh81 Wrote: Hi all, it is your friendly neighborhood SMJHL Awards Head here. As I , Lagerfield went on to have a very fascinating and controversial SHL career. I will not touch on that here, and leave it to the Hall of Fame Committee to rule on that.

curious as to why Lagerfields career is controversial  Eyebrow
you played in tampa, that's automatically controversial.
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#14

10-25-2020, 01:32 PMJSS Wrote:
10-25-2020, 12:06 PMhhh81 Wrote: Hi all, it is your friendly neighborhood SMJHL Awards Head here. As I , Lagerfield went on to have a very fascinating and controversial SHL career. I will not touch on that here, and leave it to the Hall of Fame Committee to rule on that.

curious as to why Lagerfields career is controversial  Eyebrow
Something something Tampa choke job something something Hamilton scandal.

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#15

I'm absolutely flabbergasted and honoured to have a trophy named after Alexis Metzler. I haven't been involved in Detroit in a few years now, but I still have very fond memories of that time. Maybe sometime soon... Wink

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