It’s easy to see that the voters for the annual NHL Awards love a good story.

Last year, Victor Hedman was one of the three best defensemen in the league, but he probably wasn’t number one. Plenty of blueliners, but most importantly Erik Karlsson and Drew Doughty, drove play better relative to their teams. John Carlson and John Klingberg put on year-long offensive clinics. Hedman was great, but he had a great supporting cast, and the numbers didn’t set him apart as the league’s number-one guy. Nevertheless, Hedman won the Norris Trophy by a landslide.

Taylor Hall was one of the best forwards in the NHL last year, but he wasn’t the league’s best player. That was Connor McDavid. Hall wasn’t the best player on a playoff team either; both Nathan MacKinnon and Claude Giroux had more impressive resumes when all was said and done. Still, Hall took home the Hart Trophy.

In the former case, it was Hedman’s “turn.” In the 6 seasons preceding 2017-2018, five different players had taken home the Norris Trophy; Hedman was not among them. Voters saw that Hedman had been a premier NHL defenseman for years without winning the Norris Trophy, so they entered the season inclined to believe that he was ready to take the next step. If Hedman had an excellent year, it was going to be hard for anyone else to make a case for the crown. Then, when Tampa Bay dominated the league with Hedman putting up elite raw numbers, the voters’ boxes were checked, and they gave him the nod in spite of some monstrous performances from his competitors. Hall’s campaign for the Hart became a big-time storyline for two reasons: His recent trade from Edmonton to New Jersey was (and remains) controversial, and the Devils’ dearth of skill forwards convinced voters that he was especially important to his team.

So, the top-tier defenseman finally earned his reward, and the shunned superstar found his redemption. Twice, last season, the numbers lost out to the story. This always seems to be the case at the NHL Awards. This year, if Connor McDavid scores 110 points but the Oilers miss the playoffs badly, he’ll lose out on another Hart. But if the Oilers snag a Wild Card spot, even if McDavid narrowly loses the scoring race, you can probably hand him the trophy before the season ends. Awards like the Hart and the Norris, which are meant to recognize excellent play, are decided by factors unrelated to players’ on-ice performance. As a result, the NHL Awards tend to annoy some hockey fans and bore gambling enthusiasts.

However, as I started trying to determine who might be the league’s best players this year, I noticed a fun, obvious dark horse for the Vezina Trophy: Antti Raanta, the starting goaltender for the Arizona Coyotes. Odds haven’t yet been released for the Vezina, but long shots for the Hart Trophy currently pay out at 30 or 40 to 1. I’d be willing to put a nice chunk of money on Raanta if I see Vezina odds anywhere close to those.

Raanta seems like a strange pick. He’s a relatively new starter in the league, and his Coyotes have been struggling to compete for a long time. Despite an unbelievable season from Raanta last year (something I’ll dive into more soon), the Coyotes never came close in the playoff race, and nobody put Raanta down on their Vezina ballots. For Raanta to make noise in the league-wide goalie conversation in 2018-2019, he’ll need to improve on that impressive performance, and he’ll need the team around him to help out a lot more. While neither might appear likely, there’s reason to expect both – Raanta, and the Coyotes, might be ready to shock the league this year.

Where Raanta himself is concerned, we can probably expect a lights-out year. By the numbers, Raanta was a good-to-elite backup for three seasons before the Coyotes acquired him from the Rangers as their starter:

Season Save % NHL Rank* 5v5 Save % NHL Rank* High-Danger Save % NHL Rank* 2014-2015 93.57 2 93.89 6 86.67 2 2015-2016 91.89 25 92.77 30 79.49 35 2017-2018 92.2 14 93.46 8 80.32 17

* – Among goaltenders with >400 minutes played

In 2014-2015, Raanta was the best backup in the NHL; his numbers would have topped the entire league if not for Andrew Hammond’s insane run to close out the regular season. While he stumbled under a slightly heavier workload the following year, Raanta was still a league-average backup, and he righted the ship by posting excellent numbers again in 2017-2018.

These stats are impressive for a player in his second, third, and fourth NHL seasons, but they obviously don’t imply that Raanta is a Vezina candidate. In fact, considering his small workloads, the numbers from these seasons don’t even suggest that Raanta would be any better than an average starter.

However, after winning the starting job for the Coyotes last season, Raanta put together the best year of his career, and one of the best goaltending seasons in the NHL. In 47 games, Raanta stopped 93% of the total shots he faced, 93.7% of 5v5 shots, and 82.9% of high-danger chances against. Judging by those raw totals, Raanta was the best, second-best, or fourth-best starter in the league. By Sean Tierney’s xG model, Raanta allowed 97 goals on 126.5 xG, meaning that he stopped 29.5 more goals against than did a league-average goalie. Adjusting for rate (GSAA/60), Tierney’s model had Raanta as the ninth-best goalie and the eighth-best starter in the NHL during the 2017-2018 season.

So, we have a goaltender who has successfully taken on a heavier workload each season since he entered the league at age 24, and who has never struggled in the role he’s been asked to fill. He’ll have a confident hold on the starting job in Arizona this season. If Raanta’s numbers last year were a fluke, I believe that there would be more warning signs somewhere in his history at the NHL level. He might regress a bit, but I’d be shocked if Raanta were a below-average goalie in 2018-2019. And there’s a great chance, of course, that the 29-year-old could repeat or improve upon his performance from last year.

Now, even if Raanta plays excellently, he’ll need a team around him that can help him to keep the puck out of his net. The thing is, the Coyotes were surprisingly competitive throughout the second half of the 2017-2018 season. Across their last 41 games, they were 20-14-7, and they finished the season on a 14-9-2 hot stretch. They drove possession at a decent clip too, posting just above a 49% Corsi rate at 5-on-5 from January until the end of the season. While Arizona was terrible out of the gate, and they never made noise in the playoff race, it’s possible that they became a scary team as early as January of last year.

And after finishing the season on that strong note, Arizona made two great acquisitions. First, they shipped Max Domi to Montreal for Alex Galchenyuk, a dynamic top-6 scorer. Then, they added penalty-kill specialist and elite middle-six talent Michael Grabner through free agency. These two players should seriously bolster the team’s young forward corps.

More importantly, though, Arizona is slated to see massive improvements come from within the organization this year. Clayton Keller was a Calder Trophy candidate last season; he’ll have a full summer of training and a full year of NHL experience behind him now. Dylan Strome projects to be a monster, and he’ll finally be a middle-six center for Arizona this year. Christian Dvorak is only 22, and he’s already tucked 15 goals and 30+ points in two consecutive seasons. While he has yet to light the world on fire, Jacob Chychrun was a highly touted prospect, and he too has proven to be a serviceable NHLer in two consecutive years. Christian Fischer, the 20-year-old who scored 15 times last season, rounds out the group of young players who will definitely contribute in the NHL this year.

But what an impressive group it is! How many NHL teams can say that they have five or six players under 22, all with professional experience, all perhaps ready to make a big jump this year?

And for the few teams that might be able to boast as much, how many of them also improved through trade and free agency? How many have an elite #1 defenseman? And cap space to spare? This organization is seriously getting it together.

Finally, the Coyotes play in the NHL’s worst division. While the Atlantic might be weaker at the bottom, three championship-caliber teams will control it, and the Pacific looks shaky all around. The Flames have the deepest roster on paper, but they missed the playoffs convincingly last year. The Sharks, Ducks, and Kings have all recently been contenders, but they’ve begun to struggle as their cores have aged and deteriorated. I think the Sharks are definitely a playoff team, but beyond that, it’s hard to say anything confidently about those three. Edmonton has insurmountable depth issues, Vegas’s blue line remains extremely shallow, and Vancouver is still rebuilding. With the way they finished last season, and the improvements that we can expect from them, the Coyotes are a perfect dark horse this year.

And right in the middle of everything is Antti Raanta, a goaltender in his prime who’s coming off of a career year. The team in front of him is ready to take the next step, and he could be poised to put up some serious numbers.

The narrative would be incredible, too. If he put up gaudy stats, voters would perceive a dominant goaltender backstopping the NHL season’s surprise playoff contender. He probably won’t even need to be the best goalie in the league to win the Vezina – he’ll just need to be good enough, and keep the Coyotes in the hunt long enough, that voters buy the story.

If you have money to spare, and you find a bookkeeper making Vezina odds, please throw something down on Antti Raanta. He’s a long shot for sure, but the position he’s in today indicates that you might be thanking me when June rolls back around.