Here’s a fun fact: there’s only two days in the calendar year when one of the four main North American sports leagues don’t have a regularly scheduled in season game. Those days are the two days after the MLB All-Star festivities. That doesn’t include MLS action, or NBA summer league, and technically the MLB games were exhibition contests, but point is that sports fans didn’t have a lot of options on Wednesday night.
Luckily, that was the night ESPN held their annual ESPY Awards show celebrating the best in sports for the past year. Of course, the “big hitters” and main awards seemed to be dominated by the NBA and NFL. Just add that to ESPN’s seemingly years-long criticisms of not paying enough attention to the NHL. Still, the NHL and its players received some recognition on sports' biggest non-game night.
“Favorite NHL Player” is a category given out yearly. The 2025 recipient was Leon Draisatl of the Edmonton Oilers. Draisatl broke the 50-goal mark for the fourth time in his career and finished with 106 points in the regular season. Draisatl won this season’s Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy as the league’s top goal scorer. He added another 33 points in the Oilers second straight run to the Stanley Cup finals.
His fellow nominees were Cale Makar of the Colorado Avalanche, the reigning Norris Trophy winner, Nikita Kucherov of the Tampa Bay Lightning, the latest Art Ross Trophy winner, and Connor Hellebuyck, this year's Vezina and Hart Trophy winner.
The championship Florida Panthers were nominated for the top award of ”Best Team”, as is customary for the Stanley Cup winner. No NHL player was nominated in the “Best Championship Performance" category, which was won by Simon Biles. Current Conn Smythe winner Sam Bennett of the Panthers would have been a worthy nominee.
Gabriel Landeskog was also nominated in the “Best Comeback Athlete” category. Landeskog returned during the playoffs to see his first NHL action in nearly three years, since injuries and surgeries have sidelined him since the Avalanche won in the 2022 Stanley Cup final. Landeskog, who lost the ESPY to Sunni Lee, returned to play five games in Colorado’s first round series loss to the Dallas Stars and came back strong, scoring a goal and three assists in that time.
The NHL’s biggest win of the night came in the “Best Record-Breaking Performance” category which went to none other than Alex Ovechkin after he passed Wayne Gretzky’s seemingly unbreakable goal record this past season. Ovechkin was not in attendance, but did record a speech to the crowd. He specifically made it a point to thank Gretzky and his family for their support as he chased the record.
ESPN decides the nominees for the ESPYs. Once nominations are announced, fans themselves vote on who the winner will be. That adds sort of a “popularity contest” factor to them, and also skews demographics as the voting base might be more inclined to the NFL and NBA, which ESPN promotes extensive coverage for, as opposed to the NHL.