{"id":1704,"date":"2013-04-09T16:00:49","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T21:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/hobeywatch\/?p=1704"},"modified":"2013-04-09T16:00:49","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T21:00:49","slug":"no-matter-who-takes-the-hardware-hobey-winner-will-break-the-mold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/2013\/04\/09\/no-matter-who-takes-the-hardware-hobey-winner-will-break-the-mold\/","title":{"rendered":"No matter who takes the hardware, Hobey winner will break the mold"},"content":{"rendered":"
So here we are.<\/p>\n
It’s the week of the Frozen Four, and on Saturday night either Yale, Quinnipiac, St. Cloud State or Massachusetts-Lowell will be crowned the NCAA hockey champion for the 2012-13 season.<\/p>\n
Suffice it to say, this isn’t your typical Frozen Four. So, it’s only fitting that when the 2013 Hobey Baker Award is presented on Friday night, its winner will also be atypical, to one degree or another.<\/p>\n
While I did correctly predict last week that the Hobey Hat Trick would consist of Boston College forward Johnny Gaudreau, Quinnipiac goaltender Eric Hartzell and St. Cloud State forward Drew LeBlanc, what I didn’t comment on at the time is what this group means for the 2013 Hobey. Now that we know that one of these three players will win the most prestigious individual honor in college hockey, it’s worth commenting that each one comes from a group that typically doesn’t win the Hobey.<\/p>\n
In Hartzell, of course, we have a goaltender. As we’ve been over time and again in the Hobey Watch, only two goaltenders have won the award: Robb Stauber in 1988 and Ryan Miller in 2001. And of course, Miller’s landmark numbers from that season — 1.32 goals against average, .950 save percentage — have become the de facto standard against which all other goalies have been judged when they’ve come up for the Hobey.<\/p>\n
I’ve raised the argument in the past that Cornell’s David LeNeveu would have won in 2003 had the field not included Peter Sejna and his 82 points, and I think it’s fair to say that LeNeveu would run away with the award had he been part of this year’s field.<\/p>\n
But he’s not, and instead we have Hartzell, the ECAC Hockey player of the year who has backstopped the Bobcats to the No. 1 ranking, an ECAC regular season championship and a Frozen Four berth, posting a 1.55 goals against average, a .933 save percentage and five shutouts along the way. An excellent year to be sure and well worthy of every laurel that Hartzell has received, but still, it’s fairly obvious that Hartzell doesn’t have those elusive “Ryan Miller numbers” that are presumed to be required for a goalie to win the Hobey. So, conventional wisdom would dictate that he doesn’t win.<\/p>\n
In LeBlanc, meanwhile, we have a playmaking forward with 13 goals and 37 assists this season. I’ve made a regular point in the Hobey Watch about the idea that “Hobey loves goals,” and it is worth noting that if LeBlanc is indeed this season’s Hobey winner, he will most likely do so with the fewest goals of any Hobey-winning forward.<\/p>\n
To date, the lowest goal total by a forward who won the Hobey belongs to the inaugural Hobey winner, Minnesota’s Neal Broten, who had 17 goals and 54 assists in the 1980-81 season. Folks who were around back then have spent some time wondering why it was Neal who won the award and not younger brother Aaron (47 goals, 59 assists), and if I had to guess, it probably had something to do with Neal’s participation in the “Miracle on Ice” the year before. If that’s the case, then it would make a LeBlanc win even more unprecedented.<\/p>\n
Finally, there’s Gaudreau. While Gaudreau has been viewed as the front-runner for most of the year, the fact remains that he is “the little guy from BC.”<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, I ran through the BC forwards who have been finalists for the Hobey during Jerry York’s tenure as head coach — Brian Gionta, Chris Collins, Nathan Gerbe, Cam Atkinson, etc. — and wondered aloud if the seeming ubiquity of this type of high-scoring forward at the Heights may contribute to a lack of respect from Hobey voters (since, after all, defenseman Mike Mottau is BC’s only Hobey winner under York).<\/p>\n
After all, if they seem to be almost interchangeable, how special is the guy putting up those numbers this year? Still, by most conventional measures for the Hobey, Gaudreau seems to fit the profile best. Does that mean he’ll win? We’ll find out Friday.<\/p>\n