St. Louis Blues Could Bring Home More Hardware In Vegas

Plenty of St. Louis Blues players and staff have been nominated for awards for their contributions to the team’s success. They have a chance to bring home more hardware for St. Louis tonight in Vegas.

Altogether, the St. Louis Blues have received five nominations for an award, including general manager Doug Armstrong and interim head coach Craig Berube. Ryan O’Reilly and Jordan Binnington are also up for awards for their performance on the ice.

O’Reilly was everything the Blues could have hoped for when acquiring him from Buffalo last July. He finished the season with a team-high 77 points, playing all 82 regular season games. He also took home the Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP, netting 23 points.

What makes O’Reilly so valuable to the team, is not the 56.9 faceoff percentage, or the team-low 12 penalty minutes, but it’s what he does off the ice with the young players on the roster and how involved he is in the St. Louis community.

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O’Reilly is up for two awards tonight in Las Vegas, the Selke Trophy and the Lady Bing Trophy.

The Selke Trophy is given out to the best defensive forward, and the competing players for the award are Boston’s Patrice Bergeron and Vegas’ Mark Stone.

This is the first time O’Reilly has been nominated for the Selke and noise from the national media point to him as the favorite for the award. O’Reilly led the team in plus-minus at 22, not to mention the team-low in penalty minutes and the absurd 56% faceoff rate.

O’Reilly’s nomination for the Lady Bing is not unfamiliar to him. He won the award in 2013-2014 when he was a member of the Colorado Avalanche and was a runner-up last season to Golden Knights’ forward William Karlsson.

Perhaps the most prestigious award a Blues player will be up for is the Calder Trophy for rookie of the year. This is a fascinating award that will be handed out tonight. The other nominees with Binnington are Sabers’ defensemen Rasmus Dahlin and Canucks forward Elias Pettersson.

The consensus is that Dahlin will finish third behind both Binnington and Pettersson. The race for the Calder hadn’t entirely developed until Binnington made his NHL debut. Before that time, Pettersson was tearing up the league and was running away with the trophy.

It was a tale of two halves for Pettersson, who finished the season with 66 points, but Binnington was fantastic throughout his rookie campaign. Voters will need to figure out how to value both performances through half a season, both were outstanding at points during the season, and it will be exciting to see who comes out on top. It is important to note, the votes were tallied before the start of the playoffs, so Binnington’s playoff performance will not be in consideration.

Berube is up for the Jack Adams Award for coach of the year and is competing against New York Islanders coach Barry Trotz and Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper.

This might be the biggest longshot for any Blue that will be up for an award tonight. As historic the Blues run was, the Islanders and the Lightning had plenty of success in their own right. Tampa tied the league record for wins in a season (62), and if you told me you expected the Islanders to reach 103 points, reach out to me, I would love tomorrow’s lottery numbers.

The fifth and final award the Blues are nominated for is the General Manager of The Year award. Armstrong is up against the Bruins’ Don Sweeney and Hurricanes GM Don Waddell. Armstrong was praised for his work during the offseason, assembly an eventual Stanley Cup champion team but the slow start the team got off on may come into consideration. I still expect Army to get a lot of votes for this award.

Jordan Binnington Shines In Rookie Season. dark. Next

Even if the Blues come up shorthanded tonight in Las Vegas, although unlikely, they took home the ultimate prize a week ago tonight in Boston, hoisting the Stanley Cup after seven games.

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