Wednesday night marks one of the more controversial nights of the season on the NHL calendar: the NHL Awards. Every year there’s fierce debate over which players actually deserve the hardware and scorn from many jilted fans.

Rather than delve deep into what is by now a tiresome debate, I decided to take the question to the streets and see which way fans are leaning. The wisdom of the crowd approach is a favourite of mine and one that’s especially poignant in this situation since it’s generally the fans arguing most about who deserves what.

I did the same thing last season, only this time I collected the results at the end of the regular season to align with the actual voters’ timeframe and omit any potential playoff bias that was rampant last season.

The results are in.

We surveyed almost 1,500 people, top answers are on the board: which player deserves each trophy most?

This is the big one and in the eyes of many, it’s a two-horse race between Taylor Hall and Nathan MacKinnon. That’s to be expected given each player’s special season, singlehandedly lifting bottom feeders into the postseason. Hall has a slight edge according to the public, but it’s small enough that I don’t think there’ll be much uproar if MacKinnon takes it. While Hall leads, he does it with under 50 per cent of first-place votes.

That’s a big change of pace from usual where one players wins the award in a landslide. In the salary cap era, there have only been two seasons (2009-10 and 2012-13) where the Hart Trophy winner won without a majority of first-place votes. We’ll likely be adding this year to that list.

That it was a crowded and deserving field didn’t help matters. From the survey, 16 players had a vote percentage of one per cent or higher. The average since 2005-06 is 12 and the only other year with more was 2010-11 with 18.

That means the right to be next to Hall and MacKinnon would be a hotly contested issue. Based on the results of the survey the PHWA didn’t get it right, opting for Anze Kopitar over three players who scored over 100 points this season. Kopitar no doubt had a great season, but it wasn’t even in the same league as Connor McDavid’s. And even if you don’t think he’s a no-brainer because 20 other Oilers didn’t do their job, Claude Giroux was right there as another worthy option.

Either player would’ve been a better choice according to fans who only had Kopitar as a top three choice on 18 per cent of ballots, and was only on 46 per cent of ballots in total.

Perhaps even more contentious than the Hart Trophy is the Norris Trophy which had a wide field of worthy candidates and very few actual standouts.

Victor Hedman is the odds-on favourite to take it home, but only appears on 76 per cent of fan ballots, a far-cry from the favourites in every category which range from 87 to 96 per cent. His vote percentage of 54 per cent would also be the lowest ever for a winner if the actual results mirror these in any way. Only two other seasons (1981-82 and 2011-12) had a winner under 60 per cent.

The eight players with a vote percentage above 10 per cent would also represent the highest in the salary cap era where there are usually only around five or six. I outlined that the Norris field was very crowded back in March and it seems fans seem to agree, even if the top three are exactly the same and exactly as I predicted then (using a model that mostly considers points, plus-minus, and team strength).

Defence is always hard to gauge, especially for forwards, but most agree this is a pretty close four-horse race with two main contenders. According to the betting odds released by Bodog, Patrice Bergeron and Kopitar are neck-and-neck for this award with Kopitar holding a slight advantage. Fans believe this award is probably Bergeron’s to lose which would give him five of the last seven.

In my opinion, the correct answer is neither of those two though. It’s obviously close, but with Bergeron missing a lot of time due to injury, this season felt like the beginning of the changing of the guard – one where Sean Couturier steps up as one of, if not the premier two-way centre.

That’s why it’s interesting to see his name in fourth here. He’s one of the actual finalists, but fans seem to slightly prefer Aleksander Barkov here instead. It’s likely Couturier just doesn’t have the name brand recognition yet that this award entails (otherwise Radek Faksa would’ve got way more love, too) and that might be why he’s fourth here despite earning more first-place nods. Barkov had an excellent season that deserves praise, sure, but Couturier’s offensive leap while maintaining his elite defensive acumen is arguably more worthy.

This award is Mathew Barzal’s in a landslide and I imagine the actual votes will be even closer to unanimity. According to fans, this was the easiest award to call which should come as no surprise.

Brock Boeser is just as easy of a call for runner-up, but after that things get tricky. Clayton Keller is the actual finalist, but fans liked Charlie McAvoy’s game just a little bit more it seems, placing him on 10 per cent more ballots. Keller was pretty close to being usurped by Kyle Connor too, who earned more top three votes, but fewer in the top five.

This one is voted on by the general managers so naturally they picked the three guys who led the NHL in wins. Good work, guys.

Hopefully, the fans do a better job in pick–– ugh, nevermind.

This was done before the playoffs, so there’s no excuse for John Gibson and Sergei Bobrovsky not being higher, both of whom had stronger seasons than the two goaltenders above them. It doesn’t really matter as Pekka Rinne is very likely winning this award, but it’s still a shame that two of the strongest goaltending performances this season got snubbed.

Fans saw it the exact way the actual vote went with Gerard Gallant (likely) running away with the top spot while Jared Bednar and Bruce Cassidy fight for runner-up, though John Hynes did make things close. No big surprises here, but it is a bit funny in hindsight to see the Stanley Cup-winning coach all the way down in 11th.

If you were paying attention to the voting breakdowns above than little of this is surprising as three positions (right wing, defence) are in the exact same or similar order as previous voting, but there are two interesting sticking points.

Despite finishing behind him in the survey’s Hart voting, McDavid comes out on top of MacKinnon when it comes to first team all-star centre. It’s not even close. It’s a collectively strange way of admitting that McDavid was the best player in hockey last season while giving him little credit for it for the league’s biggest award because the rest of his team was a disaster. There’d be an argument for comparative value if it was relatively close, but 71 per cent of fans had McDavid as their first team all-star centre, the most lopsided tally of any position here. While this doesn’t mean this is exactly what will happen when the real awards are revealed, it would be a hilarious farce of the voting thought process if so. And it wouldn’t even be all that surprising either.

The other distinction is Alex Ovechkin taking second team all-star left wing honours over Claude Giroux despite the latter having a near 30 per cent edge in vote percentage for the Hart. While the survey showcased both as options in the drop-down menu – and Ovechkin only beat him by 1.5 per cent – it does remind me of another winger who got snubbed from an all-star team a few years ago because Ovechkin made both teams at left wing and right wing due to a position change that season. This won’t be the same, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Giroux doesn’t get the requisite votes at left wing because of his own position change this season.