Mark Messier Award
The NHL has introduced the Mark Messier Award, to be presented monthly to a player who best exemplifies leadership on and off the ice. A leader-of-the-year award will also be presented at the end of the year.While I like this idea, as it honors the best leader in hockey history, and arguably in all of sports (no disrespect to other great leaders such as Yzerman, Bourque…etc), it has many flaws.
Firstly, it will be up to Messier to select the player receiving the award, along with imput from the league. How will he do this? He would have to be constantly around all the teams all the time as it is given for on and off ice leadership. A more reasonable scenario would likely have one delagate by team or division to nominate one player per team/division for the award, and then present their case to Messier and the League.
Also presenting the award every month will get pretty redundant as their is bound to be multiple winners, the award would be much more prestigious if it was only presented at the end of the year.
Any thoughts?
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