The St. Louis Blues haven’t had much good news since the 2020 playoffs. While the team might not be affected, their present captain got some decent news from the league.
While this site is supposed to be dedicated to the St. Louis Blues, it feels much more like Bleedin’ Alex Pietrangelo lately. For the past week or so, the vast majority of content has been focused on the team’s current captain and there is still more to come.
However, at least this particular article doesn’t have to focus on the contract issue between the team and Pietrangelo. Instead, Pietrangelo got recognized by the NHL as one of the league’s best.
The NHL handed out the last of their awards for 2020 just prior to Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final between Tampa Bay and Dallas. Most notably, the Hart Trophy was given to Leon Draisaitl, but that’s another matter.
As far as Pietrangelo was concerned, he got recognized as one of the top defenders in the league as we found out the official Norris Trophy voting. He was also recognized as a top-10 player in the NHL.
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As far as top-10, Pietrangelo was named to the league’s second-team postseason All-Star team. He was joined by Victor Hedman, Brad Marchand, Nathan MacKinnon, Nikita Kucherov and Tuukka Rask.
The only downfall of that team is having Pietrangelo associated with Marchand in any way. Blues fans will just have to deal with it.
The first team was John Carlson, Roman Josi, Draisaitl, Artemi Panarin, David Pastrnak and Connor Hellebuyck. The first team is about as offensively potent as you can get, but I actually might take the second team in an actual game between the two.
The second team is more defensively sound and plays a full game around the rink. The first team is mostly just focused on offense and, fully aware of my bias against a divisional rival, I’m just not sold on Hellebuyck.
Circling back to Pietrangelo, we also found out where he finished in the Norris Trophy voting. This is the second time in Petro’s career to finish fourth in the Norris voting.
Pietrangelo has finished on the second-team All-Star team three times now and finished as high as fourth twice in the Norris Voting.
It is all quite deserved for the defensman. Pietrangelo had pretty much a career year.
Pietrangelo set a new career best for goals scored and also shots taken. He came just two points short of his career high with only 70 games played and also tied his most career power play goals, with six.
Personally, I think Pietrangelo is a better all-around player than Carlson. It’s an offensive league, though, so just second-team honors for the current Blue.