Don't sleep on Canucks star players, even if some eastern media do

Bob Frid-USA TODAY Sports

Dear eastern media members and NHL award voters,

We the citizens of the Pacific Time Zone are imploring you to stay up later. Or record games and watch them when you get up the next morning.

Because the technology is now there to compensate for your attention spans and sleep deprivation. And quite frankly, players like Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes deserve your consideration.

Shoutout to John Shannon, our Tuesday regular, for planting the seed for this editorial. As you can hear on our show, Shannon wonders how many NHL award winners have come from the Pacific Time Zone.

So I did the math. The answer? Less than 20.

Now, to be fair, I counted the big five subjective awards: Hart, Norris, Calder, Selke, and Adams. Didn’t dig as deep as Lady Byng or Ted Lindsay Award (which is voted on by the players), nor did I consider the subjective awards like the Art Ross or the Rocket Richard, won by point and goal totals, respectively.

I also excluded the two Jack Adams Awards won by Coyotes’ coaches as Arizona isn’t always on Pacific Time. And, of course, the Seattle Kraken, Anaheim Ducks, and San Jose Sharks don’t have the longest histories.

For decades, Pacific Time Zone hockey meant the Vancouver Canucks and Los Angeles Kings. C’est tout.

But going back to the Kings’ inaugural season in 1967-68, the Pacific Time Zone has won just 19 of 270 NHL Awards among the Big 5 trophies, or slightly more than 7%.

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The Kings have seven, the Canucks have six, the Sharks have four, and the Ducks and Kraken have one apiece.

Again, there’s a lot of context to the time zone’s underrepresentation with these awards, but in some cases, it’s simply because the voters aren’t as familiar with players on the West Coast.

Seattle’s Matty Beniers won the Calder last year, and San Jose’s Erik Karlsson won the Norris. That broke a three-year drought for the time zone, going back to Pettersson’s Calder in 2019.

Only three Hart Trophies have been won by the Pacific: Wayne Gretzky in 1989, Joe Thornton in 2006, and Henrik Sedin in 2010. And only three Adams awards, too: Bob Pulford in 1975, Pat Quinn in 1992, and Alain Vigneault in 2007.

So it’s been 16 years between coach-of-the-year accolades, 13 years between MVPs, and five years since Anze Kopitar’s last Selke.

Those might be the toughest awards to vote on, so no surprises that Pacific teams haven’t fared as well.

All this can and should change. Those still stuck in old ways are running out of excuses.

If you’re given a vote, it’s your responsibility to know the league. The whole league. Even those teams that face-off past your bedtime.