All eyes were on the expansion draft Wednesday night, but the NHL also used the opportunity to hand out its annual awards in between picks.

Often some of those decisions, as chosen by members of the media, can be contentious, but this year most were fine. Can’t disagree with Connor McDavid winning the Hart Trophy as the league MVP, Blue Jackets goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky taking home the Vezina Trophy, Leafs rookie Auston Matthews winning the Calder Trophy or Patrice Bergeron winning the Selke Trophy for the fourth time. And with all due respect to Ottawa’s Erik Karlsson, San Jose’s Brent Burns winning the Norris Trophy isn’t as egregious as the 2016 Karlsson snub.

Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella winning the Jack Adams Award for best coach of the year is perhaps the most questionable choice, but even that one is fine considering Columbus reached heights they’ve never reached before.

The lack of controversy with these winners is a nice change of pace from the usual post-award show debate. Still, I was curious who average hockey fans felt deserved each award and whether it would line up with the actual winner. I thought it would be a good way of measuring which players got snubbed according to fans, and therefore, which players were more highly regarded by the voters.

On Tuesday, I tweeted out a survey asking people to fill out their own award ballot for each of the major awards. I got more than 500 responses, with 368 to 453 (depending on the award) being usable.

As it turns out, it is tough for some people to shake the recency bias of the playoffs out of their mind even when the instructions say “regular season only” and I think some results would have been different had I done this survey in April. This affected the results of a few players (which we’ll get to), but it still makes for an interesting comparison between the actual results and also a little lesson in how recency bias affects how we think about players.

So without further adieu, here are the results of the Twitter NHL Awards along with some analysis of who actually won.

No surprise at all as McDavid is the very deserved winner, while Sidney Crosby takes the second spot. In third, though, is Karlsson over Bobrovsky, a jump from where he was on the actual ballot (fifth). He had the biggest leap in vote percentage, which is probably the sole reason most players in the top 10 dropped.

I’d imagine some of the strong support for Karlsson as MVP is thanks to seeing him bring Ottawa to within one goal of the Stanley Cup final, but I think he’d still be third if I ran this survey in April as well, though maybe not to the same degree. In terms of overall value there’s debate about who was the league’s best player, but there is little doubt in my mind about which player was the most valuable to his team — and that’s Karlsson. Ottawa is nowhere near the playoffs without him.

Matthews gets the next biggest bump. I’m sure that’s due to some Leafs bias among my followers. Overall the results aren’t too far from what actually happened. Picking the league’s best players usually isn’t that hard.

Strangest actual votes: Alex Ovechkin and Ryan Suter (?!) both got lone second place votes.

Who I’d pick: 1. Connor McDavid, 2. Erik Karlsson, 3. Sidney Crosby, 4. Sergei Bobrovsky, 5. Nikita Kucherov

This was the closest vote of the night with less than 10 per cent separating Burns and Karlsson, though the survey-takers believed it should’ve been a more clear cut win for Karlsson. Again, I think the playoffs were a factor and this would be closer in April, but I still believe Karlsson would have the edge then, too. Victor Hedman rounds out the top three as expected.

After those top-three results, things get interesting. P.K. Subban didn’t receive a single Norris vote this year, but showed up on 35 per cent of survey responses and ended up fourth. He did have a better season than he was given credit for (he was top-10 defenceman by my stat Game Score), but he only played 66 games and voters usually shy away from players that miss time. He deserved some votes, but fourth is pushing it and is likely a product of his stellar post-season.

The other biggest difference is the players who finished fourth and fifth: Duncan Keith and Ryan Suter. It didn’t take me long to figure out why each player was ranked so high by the voters: plus-minus. Suter led all defencemen at +34 and Keith was a tidy +22. It’s 2017 – how are awards still decided by archaic stats? To their credit they had nice seasons, just not fourth and fifth best.

Strangest actual votes: Shea Weber getting a first-place vote, Torey Krug getting a second place vote and Dmitry Orlov getting any vote were all a little out there.

Who I’d pick: 1. Erik Karlsson, 2. Brent Burns, 3. Victor Hedman, 4. Dougie Hamilton, 5. Roman Josi

This is a fun one and it’s mostly because evaluating defence is the hardest thing to do in hockey. Even the announcer for this award had a hard time figuring it out as he cited faceoff percentage for all three nominees. Maybe next year we’ll get a Corsi reference, but I’m not holding my breath.

The actual results were shockingly close. This survey was not. This award belongs to Bergeron until he gives us a reason not to give it to him.

After that things get murky. Ryan Kesler and Mikko Koivu still end up in the runner-up positions in my survey, but they’re closer to the pack than they are to the leader.

There’s very little consensus on who the best defensive forwards are after Bergeron and a lot of that has to do with how many good ones there are and also how we view these players. Reputation goes a long way. Anze Kopitar gets the fifth spot in my survey despite a down season, while Jonathan Toews got the fifth spot for the actual award despite also having a down season. Overall, there were 100 different players who got votes, the most of any award here.

Strangest actual votes: Two people gave first-place votes to TJ Oshie. Two!

Who I’d pick: 1. Patrice Bergeron, 2. Mikael Backlund, 3. Ryan Kesler, 4. Mikko Koivu, 5. Mark Stone

This was the easiest decision. It was Matthews’ to lose and he won it in a landslide capturing 164 first-place votes out of 167. Not unanimous victory — but still pretty close.

For this award, the only major difference between the voters and my survey respondents was between William Nylander and Mitch Marner for the fifth spot. The survey leaned towards Nylander. Marner and Nylander had the same amount of points, but Nylander was the better play driver. It’s a thin margin and there’s a good argument to pick either, but I’d go with Nylander.

I personally think Zach Werenski was a bit more deserving than Patrik Laine considering he stepped in as a number one defenceman as a rookie, but it’s close. This really was a sensational rookie crop.

Strangest actual vote: None, though I’m a little surprised Zach Werenski didn’t manage a single first-place vote.

Who I’d pick: 1. Auston Matthews, 2. Zach Werenski, 3. Patrik Laine, 4. Matt Murray, 5. William Nylander

This was another award where fan perception aligned closely with the voters. The top five remains exactly the same in my survey with the only difference being there’s a little bit more love for Devan Dubnyk, who’s much closer to Carey Price and Cam Talbot than he was in actual voting. The third spot behind Bobrovsky and Braden Holtby is close and there’s a good argument for all three here.

Dubnyk faltered towards the end of the season and that’s likely one instance where recency bias affected voters rather than the survey results. He had nearly identical numbers to Price, but because his play dropped as the season came to a close he only got half as many votes.

Strangest actual vote: Just six goalies got votes and one of them was Martin Jones.

Who I’d pick: 1. Sergei Bobrovsky, 2. Braden Holtby, 3. Carey Price

This was easily the most contentious. I’d surmise that’s because teasing out a coach’s impact from team results isn’t easy. Tortorella won the award, but it’s hard not to look over at who won the Vezina and figure there were better options for this award. Not that he doesn’t deserve any credit for Columbus’s first 100-point season, but they got a lot of help from the PDO gods to get there. Todd McLellan came third, but again, take a look at who the league’s MVP was and you’ll get a better idea of why Edmonton finally made the playoffs.

In my opinion, there were three better choices.

Mike Babcock has, somehow, never won this award. This year was his best chance as he took a last-place team to the playoffs. Perhaps you can make the same argument that the Big Three rookies helped him there, but it’s not even close to the same degree that McDavid and Bobrovsky had on the other two coaches.

Mike Sullivan likely gets a boost here thanks to winning the Cup, but I do recall some snub whispers when the nominees were announced. Without Pittsburgh’s best defenceman for half the season and with injuries piling up every week, the Penguins finished second in the entire league. That’s impressive and we know from the big reversal last season after he was hired that a lot of that has to do with his system. It works, clearly.

The final option is Bruce Boudreau who took a mediocre hockey club and turned them into a Cup contender, again. Every team he joins is instantaneously successful and I have no idea how that hasn’t been rewarded yet. He finished ninth in voting. I don’t get it.

Strangest actual vote: It’s a little weird that a coach who got fired mid-season (Claude Julien) got a vote, but I guess the fact he got hired a week later by a rival team makes it a little less weird.

Who I’d pick: 1. Mike Babcock, 2. Mike Sullivan, 3. Bruce Boudreau