Every year, NHL fans and analysts debate every award from the Hart Trophy to the Lady Bing and everything in between. When there is a snub, it’s something that sits with players for years. If a player is “deserving” of being named MVP, but someone else wins it that year. They may never get a chance to win it again.
Every year, people think there is a snub. Even when the award winner seems obvious, there will be arguments. Last season, Connor McDavid got every single first-place vote for MVP. Still, some would say that Nathan MacKinnon, Auston Matthews, or Aleksander Barkov deserved to win the award. It’s not the right move, and McDavid deserved the win.
However, this list isn’t looking for the obvious. This list is considering the players that got robbed. There are dozens of examples of players who deserved to win awards but when the announcement was made another name was called the winner. Sometimes it’s the winner of the playoff MVP, or other times it’s the Selke Award for best defensive forward in the league.
Which NHL players saw the biggest award snubs in history?
There are some snubs that live on in history. The snubs sting so hard we still feel them decades later. We wonder why the voters got it so wrong. Did they do right by the league with how they decided these awards? The voters are trying to consolidate what happened this entire season with a few votes. Sometimes they get it wrong. When did they get it the most wrong? It starts with a superstar defenseman who deserved to be rookie of the year.