Second Thoughts: Please Give Adam Gaudette the Hobey, I'm Begging You

by Ryan Lambert/Columnist (@twolinepass)

For the most part, the Hobey Hat Trick feels right.

Denver's Henrik Borgström was perhaps the most dynamic and captivating offensive player in the country, and played for an elite team. He delivered nearly every night, going pointless only 10 times in 40 games.

Harvard's Ryan Donato was arguably the biggest threat to change a game singlehandedly in the country this season, scoring 26 goals in just 29 games despite the fact that he missed four games. Exactly one-quarter of all Harvard's goals this season came off his stick.

Northeastern's Adam Gaudette was the national leader in goals and points, as well as points per game. He also powered a not-so-deep Northeastern team to an NCAA tournament berth and (if you're into this sort of thing) the team's first Beanpot since the end of the Reagan administration.

Simply put, Gaudette must win this year's Hobey Baker award for voters to have any remaining credibility. There was an argument to be made for Will Butcher last year as the best player at his position, playing on the best team in the country, even if he didn't score to the extent that you'd maybe want even a defenseman to score to get the award. He was also a senior and voters love that. I would have picked Zach Aston-Reese (also of Northeastern) but it was hard to really argue with Butcher's candidacy or win.

I think it's more than fair to quibble with Donato's candidacy — he played 29 NCAA games while many other qualified candidates played 38 to 40 — so this is the equivalent of putting an NHLer with 60 or 62 games played in your top three for the Hart. It wouldn't happen, and for good reason.

There are plenty of people who say Donato should get credit for his phenomenal performance on a bad U.S. Olympic team (5-1-6 in five games), but this is ludicrous on its face since these were games played, y'know, not in college hockey; by this token, why not include his 3-2-5 for the Bruins so far this season? He's really great, but you can't compare NCAA apples to Olympic oranges.

But we're judging the top three candidates here, so let's compare what we can reasonably compare. (Note: the vote is already complete; the Hobey Hat Trick represents the top three vote getters. There is no further voting.) Here's the quick look at their per-game scoring, which really works in Donato's favor since he played nine and 11 fewer games than Gaudette and Borgström, respectively:

You will note that even then, Gaudette and Donato are neck-and-neck for primary points (tied at 1.21 per game versus Borgström's 0.92) but Donato falls way behind in secondary assists. Donato was also just 95th in the nation in primary assists per game (0.31).

Moreover, this is and should be about accumulation, and the fact that Donato is not in the top 120 in the country in primary assists. At that point, the number of guys with 10 or nine primary assists is immaterial; this guy directly created 33 percent fewer goals on the season than someone named Mark Auk. I don't even know who that is!

Meanwhile, Gaudette was tied for 19th in primary assists and Borgström was tied for 34th.

(And by the way, even if we include Donato's production from the Olympics, his per-game numbers actually get worse, so his boosters might want to rethink that argument.)

If there were betting odds on this sort of thing, I would guess they'd have Donato and Gaudette as the favorites, perhaps not in that order. Borgström had a great season, but he's far enough behind in the competition that it's tough to see a real way forward for him to actually win. Nice to be nominated, I guess.

The historical context of this vote is also important, because even if we're granting Donato that his games-played shortage doesn't matter (and it does!) he still doesn't really stack up as a legit Hobey-winning forward in recent history either.

Here's all a graph of the 14 forwards placed in the Hobey Hat Trick over the past six seasons, with winners italicized and this year's candidates underlined:

As you can see, Donato is well above average in his ability to generate shots (a valuable and underrated skill that typically serves as a strong predictor of the most talented players in the country) but a little below average in this group as a points producer. Borgström, meanwhile, doesn't really stack up that well at all, except to say that he's significantly better at everything than Drew LeBlanc and Nic Dowd, both of whom were embarrassing candidates, even leaving aside LeBlanc inexplicably winning.

Gaudette, meanwhile, represents himself well enough, outscoring and outshooting the averages of the field. Right now this reads more like an anti-Donato case, but I think that's because Gaudette's argument speaks for itself. He was simply better than any other player in the country this year.

And that's before you take into account that his team wasn't that good when he was off the ice and the fact that he started more of his 5-on-5 shifts this season in his own zone than the other team's, playing that fabled 200-foot game that only matters when voters want to galaxy-brain their way to picking someone who was something other than the best player in the country.

Voters might have dinged him for playing with Dylan Sikura and Nolan Stevens, who were both phenomenal scorers each of the last two seasons (the former moreso than the latter). Maybe they dinged him because he didn't have a point and was a minus-3 in Northeastern's NCAA tournament game, but his team still went much farther than Donato's Crimson in both the conference and national scene, if we're making that a qualification for some reason.

Maybe the voters found a picture of Donato holding a puppy to push him over the top, because the on-ice results scream “Gaudette” all the way.

As with any other individual sports award, if people have to start building arguments why the best player shouldn't win, they're trying to sell you something. In this case it's the being a champion of Amateurism lives on with an Olympic roster featuring four non-pros. It's hard to wrap your head around that, but okay sure.

Donato winning wouldn't be the one of the two worst Hobey decisions in the past six years, but this should be Gaudette's award with little question.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist and is the ONLY HOST of the NCAA hockey podcast "Hockey Goes to College" (the other guy is only his sidekick). His email is here and his Twitter is here.