Predicting the 5 major NHL Award winners from 2022-23

The National Hockey League regular season has come to an end. It was an amazing time all year long, as there were great teams and bad teams.

The great teams battled all year long for playoff positioning, while the bad teams participated in the Connor Bedard sweepstakes. It was entertaining all year long.

Once the season is over, we can start to think about the individual awards that will be handed out at the end of the season.

There are a lot of really prestigious awards that the league gives and some amazing players are going to be the recipients of them. These are the players that should be the winners of all the top NHL Awards:

Hart Trophy

The Hart Trophy is an NHL Award that was locked up a really long time ago.

The Hart Trophy is the award that goes to the player that is voted most valuable to his team. The MVP this season is going to be Connor McDavid once again. This is an NHL Award that was locked up a long time ago, as it became clear that McDavid was pulling away.

Only a handful of players have ever had 150 points in the NHL, and McDavid did that. He had 64 goals and 89 assists for 153 points. He led the league in every category to win the Rocket Richard and the Art Ross trophy. He will be adding another MVP to his shelf as well.

Watching McDavid in 2022-23 has simply been magnificent. He wanted to go out there and score some more goals. Most would have assumed that his assist totals came down as a result, but he actually had a career-high in those by ten too.

Thinking about the fact that he is just now entering his true prime is scary. He has 850 career points, so another year like this and he could reach 1000 by the end of next season, and he’ll only be 27. There will be a few more Hart Trophies coming his way after this one too.

Vezina Trophy

The Vezina Trophy goes to the NHL’s most dominant goalie for the season.

Most years, the Vezina Trophy goes to a guy that you came into the year knowing that they had a chance. Guys like Igor Shesterkin, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Jusse Saros, and Connor Hellebuyck are the favorites every year. In 2022-23, however, a goaltender stepped up in a big way.

The Boston Bruins no longer have Tuukka Rask, as he has retired, but the top goaltending has stayed strong. Now, they will have another Vezina Trophy winner in franchise history as Linus Ullmark will win the award.

There are some elite goalies in this league, but Ullmark led them all in wins, goals-against average, and save percentage. There are plenty of metrics that suggest that he was the best this season, and he deserves the hardware.

Without Ullmark, the Bruins certainly would not have had the record that they did. It was the greatest regular season team ever, and he was a huge part of it. This one is almost as much of a lock as the Hart Trophy at this point.

Norris Trophy

The Norris Trophy goes to the NHL’s most outstanding defenseman every year.

The league’s most outstanding defenseman gets debated year in and year out. A lot of the time, the Norris Trophy goes to a defenseman that has a lot of points. Scoring points doesn’t make you the best at defense, so there is always a debate.

Well, Erik Karlsson has already won the Norris Trophy twice, and he deserves to win it again. He reached the 100-point mark and was the first defenseman to do so since the 1991-92 season. A feat like that should get it for him.

There are other good options out there like Adam Fox, Charlie McAvoy, and Dougie Hamilton, but it is hard to argue with the historical season that Karlsson has had up to this point.

This season also kind of came out of nowhere, as Erik Karlsson hasn’t been the elite version of himself in a long time. He looked like the Erik Karlsson that used to be so dominant all year long in a very tough San Jose Sharks organization.

As long as he is healthy, he should continue to have good years, but they need to award him the Norris now.

Calder Trophy

The Calder Trophy goes to the rookie that had the best season that year.

There were a lot of great rookies throughout the National Hockey League in 2022-23. They were also scattered all throughout the league at all different positions. With that said, Seattle Kraken rookie Matty Beniers was the best of the bunch this season.

He had 24 goals and 33 assists for 57 points in 80 games played while contributing some amazing play on both sides of the puck. He is a guy whose all-around game is amazing for a rookie and is only going to improve.

It is nice that his defensive game is good in his rookie year because you know the offense is going to be there in bunches as he gets older.

Other rookies have made big impacts, but Beniers helped lead this Kraken team all the way to the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. He is a big reason that they shocked the world and made it all the way there.

Now, he will be getting ready to try and make an impact with them in their first-ever playoff matchup in franchise history. Once the season is over, Beniers should have the Calder Trophy locked up while reflecting on what was a great season for the Kraken.