2010 Vezina Trophy Candidates

Well, this week is award nomination week in the NHL, but the awards ceremony isn't for sometime yet. We're only a week out of the end of the regular season, but they are getting all of these out of the way, so we have something else to talk about besides the inconsistent officiating in the playoffs. This year, we have three different nominees from the 2009 list, but they are not all new names to the Vezina Trophy game.

Sorting from the pool points list, our first candidate was the top goalie in the hockey pools this year, Martin Brodeur, who finished up with 111 points, thanks to a 45-25-6 record, with 9 shutouts and 3 assists. Brodeur also finished the season with a very respectable 2.24 GAA and .916 save percentage in the year, but I think we have to merit his nomination strictly on his wins and shutouts, because there were a few goalies with better statistics otherwise.

Finishing 10 points behind Brodeur in the hockey pool scoring, Ilya Bryzgalov is our second nominated goaltender. He finished off with a 42-20-6 record with 8 shutouts and 1 assist for 101 points this season. That also put him 6th in pool scoring, leading the Coyotes to their first playoff berth in quite some time. He polished off his stats with a 2.20 GAA and a .920 save percentage, which is a touch better than our earlier nominated goalie, but played on a more offensively open team, which makes the stats a little more impressive.

Finally, it is Ryan Miller of the Sabres who rounded out our Vezina Trophy candidates and he finished the year with 92 points in the hockey pool this year, ranking him 5th among all goalies and 11th in pool scoring. He compiled a 41-18-8 record, with 5 shutouts and no assists, which isn't anything to shake a stick at. A 2.22 GAA and .929 save percentage are very respectable numbers, especially his save percentage. Having the least amount of losses and a high save percentage looks awfully good and possibly hard to beat.

I think if you polled most people and pundits, you would find that Miller should be the favourite for the award, which would make for back-to-back years that the lowest pool ranking goalie wins the award. If we were going by pool merits, obviously, it would be Brodeur that would earn the nod this year, but his more-individual numbers do pale in comparison to the other two.

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