Bye bye, Taylor Hall!
The unofficial final bow was put on the 2022-23 NHL season Monday night with the league’s annual awards show, held in Nashville this year.
The Bruins cleaned up, which wasn’t a surprise given that the vast majority of the awards are for regular-season performance.
Patrice Bergeron won a record sixth Selke Trophy as the league’s best defensive forward. Linus Ullmark won his first Vezina Trophy as the top goalie. Jim Montgomery won his first Jack Adams Award for coach of the year. The Jim Gregory Award for general manager of the year won’t be awarded until the draft on Wednesday, but you can pretty safely pencil in Don Sweeney for a win there.
Those are all remarkable accomplishments. They deserve to be celebrated. And yet it was hard to shake the feeling that much of Bruins Nation greeted the night with a shrug.
These awards were reminders of the Bruins’ dominant regular season, but they were also painful reminders of what could and arguably should have been, but wasn’t.
All those awards victories were deserved. The winners were barely debatable, never mind controversial. David Pastrnak’s runner-up finish for the Hart Trophy was deserved as well. The Bruins broke the regular-season records for wins and points, and while that’s obviously a team accomplishment, the individual work of Bergeron, Ullmark, Pastrnak, Montgomery and Sweeney helped them do it and deserved recognition.
But that incredible regular season, maybe the most enjoyable Bruins fans have experienced, was followed by postseason failure, maybe the most disappointing Bruins fans have experienced.
Against the backdrop of Boston’s blown 3-1 series lead and first-round exit at the hands of the Florida Panthers, Monday night offered little consolation.
It also doesn’t help that fans’ attention has already turned to the offseason, which kicks into high gear this week with the draft on Wednesday and Thursday and the start of free agency on Saturday. The Bruins already made one big trade on Monday, shipping Taylor Hall to Chicago in a salary dump.
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Boston fans are more concerned with whether Bergeron and Ullmark are going to be back next season than whether they won awards. Bergeron, whose fourth child is expected to arrive any day now, has not yet announced whether he plans to retire or play another season. Ullmark could potentially be traded as Sweeney continues to look for ways to free up enough money to add at positions of need.
Maybe with more separation, the Bruins and their fans will develop more appreciation for these awards. That would be a good thing. Even though none of these mean as much as a Stanley Cup, they do actually mean something.
Bergeron winning a sixth Selke at 37 years old and now having two more than anyone else in history is crazy. It will be the first or second line on his Hall of Fame plaque someday. Ullmark becoming just the second goalie in the last 30 years to win the triple crown – leading the NHL in wins, save percentage and goals-against average – is something he really should be proud of.
Montgomery taking advantage of a career second chance after alcohol addiction cost him his job in Dallas remains a feel-good story, playoff disappointment aside. His acceptance speech about his battles with alcohol, which you can watch below, was genuinely touching.
It’s easy to say that none of it matters since the season ended in such disappointing fashion. That’s not really the case, though, or at least it shouldn’t be. In the bigger picture of careers and lives, this should matter at least a little.
On Monday night, though, it was hard not to feel like it all matters a heck of a lot less than it should have, and would have had the Bruins achieved their ultimate goal.