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There will now be a monthly players award given out for team leadership as well as a year end trophy all named for Mark Messier.
And as much as I like Messier, and being a Hawks fan naturally despise the Red Wings, I think it would have been more fitting to name the season-long award for Steve Yzerman and name great Captains of the recent Past each to a month of the year's Leadership award
Among my candidates would have been honoring other recent retiree's like Ron Francis, Keith Primeau and Scott Stevens.
Speaking of Stevens I'm also in favor of a real defenseman's defensman "stay at homer" award for defense named after Stevens and a renaming of the Norris to the Orr trophy and continuing to award it to defenesmen that are great offensively.
I was just wondering how you measure leadership... then I realized that I probably don't care as long as the award doesn't go to Yashin, Tkachuk or Niinimaa.
The monthly basis is a bit odd; we'll just have to see who the names end up being I'd guess. Not sure when they are starting this though because I got this from TSN and it's not even mentioned on the hellish design nightmare that is NHL.com yet
Kekkonen wrote:I was just wondering how you measure leadership... then I realized that I probably don't care as long as the award doesn't go to Yashin, Tkachuk or Niinimaa.
Bwah! Actually, being in Vancouver I figure the first two on your list are prime candidates to receive the award. Followed shortly thereafter by Wade Belak, Daniel Alfredsson, Markus Naslund, and Hal Gill. Oh hatcher and Rathje deserve it too.
Any award named after this guy is insane! Ummm...the Wayne award? Mario? Bobby Orr? Igor Larionov International Player award? Patty Roy?
Nope...
Messier, oh yeah he helped the Rangers...AYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEE. Chrome dome idjit.
I think it's an attempt to draw attention to players around the NHL, to try to help create more superstars. It's also good to recognize the intangibles like leadership, which is such an important part of the game. Look at the Flyers! I really think their biggest problem is they don't have a true leader like Primeau was to lead by example and hold guys like Forsberg and Gagne accountable while teaching players like Jeff Carter and Mike Richards what it takes to be great. I agree that it's a little quick on the draw for them to name a trophy after Messier, but he WAS one of the greatest...
Strange indeed, with all those behind the scenes decisions and stuff how can he select a proper winner?. Most likely just end up being winning games as captain = award winner regardless hmm.
Well the first "leadership" award winner just so happens to be on a new team and has chipped in 13 goals and 9 assists... Brendan Shanahan. So that to me says this is no different from a Player of the Month award or someone who isn't among the leagues top scorers should have won it. Meh.
I like the idea behind this award, because of how important leadership/teamwork is... but I really don't see it working. Mainly because I don't see there being enough true leaders to give the award a new deserved winner every month. Also, it seems really arbitrary... which means the award is based on nothing but what the judge sees as good leadership... and who knows the definition of "good leadership"?
...I don't know, I guess we'll find out soon enough how it goes.
P.S. I think they should make this something that fans can go to NHL.com and vote for the winner - Exactly like the F.A. Premier League Goal of the Week. Then there might be less of the arbitrary-ness I was talking about above.
Well, some more details on this one and I like it much much much less... this is actually Mark Messier's award for Leadership as in the "Joe Smith Scholarship Fund" with schools. He's the main person deciding on the honor in conjunction with the NHL. There is also a five thousand dollar donation to charity the winner can decide upon. It is meant to look at both on and off ice to encourage players to work with charities and be examples off the ice. Fine, that's all well and good.
Then I had to listen to Mark Messier himself talk about it on "Versus" (still the dumbest name change ever) and he very quickly pointed out that "The Cold-FX Mark Messier Leadership Award" is a partnership between him and Cold-FX that Cold-FX and he came up with and the NHL has agreed to join he and Cold-FX on so that Cold-FX can continue to expand it's charitable work which is great because he's really excited to be working with Cold-FX since he's used Cold-FX for over ten years now and this partnership between Cold-FX and the NHL should really encourage sportsmanship. So if you go to Cold-FX.com you can also nominate someone from your community for a Cold-FX Mark Messier Leadership certificate. So, that's what the Cold-FX Mark MMessier Leadership award is all about."
The winner can pick a charity that gets all of five grand? Wow. In a multi-million dollar business, that's like me giving 20 cents to a street performer. (That's Euro cents -- a full quarter US!)
OK, so it's better than nothing, but it still sounds like a cheap way of getting your name out for, um... who was it again that was sponsoring this?
It's basically the Valentine's Day of awards; just an excuse to peddle product fully bought and payed for my corporate interests and thinly "excused" by the donations. And I realize 5 grand is 5 grand but in charity terms that's a joke especially from a corporate sponsor. Hell, you can for example give one of your kids/grandkids over 15 grand a year and not get taxed for it; so for big companies and wealthy individuals that have to either give away money or get it taxed away anyhow 5 grand a month is borderline insulting.
And I've lost all respect for Messier after his "bringing this partnership to the NHL" Sellout.
Minstrel wrote:Well the first "leadership" award winner just so happens to be on a new team and has chipped in 13 goals and 9 assists... Brendan Shanahan. So that to me says this is no different from a Player of the Month award or someone who isn't among the leagues top scorers should have won it. Meh.
Just wen I've at least put his diatribe on Versus out of my head good ole crome dome cold pill peddler invades my darn Hawks broadcast to tell me about voting for my favorite player in the.... you guess it! Cold-FX NHL All-Star Game Fan Balloting, so if you want your favorite player to play in this year's Cold-FX NHL All-Star Game fill out your ballot at your home rink or (again I bet you saw this coming eh?) go to Cold-FX.com to fill out your ballot for the Cold-FX NHL All-Star Game now!
x 100.
Now if you'll excuse me I am going to go puke, and no it has nothing to do with my having a cold.
Minstrel wrote:Just wen I've at least put his diatribe on Versus out of my head good ole crome dome cold pill peddler invades my darn Hawks broadcast to tell me about voting for my favorite player in the.... you guess it! Cold-FX NHL All-Star Game Fan Balloting, so if you want your favorite player to play in this year's Cold-FX NHL All-Star Game fill out your ballot at your home rink or (again I bet you saw this coming eh?) go to Cold-FX.com to fill out your ballot for the Cold-FX NHL All-Star Game now!
x 100.
Now if you'll excuse me I am going to go puke, and no it has nothing to do with my having a cold.
Haha, I completely forgot about that, only they took it a bit further for me. Click here to vote now in the Cold FX NHL All-Star Game Fan Balloting presented by ESPN NHL 2k7.
So that to me says this is no different from a Player of the Month award or someone who isn't among the leagues top scorers should have won it. Meh.
diatribe on Versus out of my head good ole crome dome cold pill peddler invades my darn Hawks broadcast to tell me about voting for my favorite player in the.... you guess it! Cold-FX NHL All-Star Game Fan Balloting, so if you want your favorite player to play in this year's Cold-FX NHL All-Star Game fill out your ballot at your home rink or (again I bet you saw this coming eh?) go to Cold-FX.com to fill out your ballot for the Cold-FX NHL All-Star Game now! 
The whole Cold-FX/NHL thing