Historic Snubs: A History of Stars Snubbed at the Awards

Starting May 2nd, the NHL announced its nominees for the league’s annual awards.

To nobody’s surprise, nobody from the Dallas Stars will be a finalist for the awards.

Norris

Miro Heiskanen is undoubtedly one of the best duel-threat defensemen in the NHL. He can score as well as lock down the league’s best in the D-zone.

Not even a nomination for this year’s Norris trophy. Despite consistently giving the Stars a chance to win every night.

A complete package as a player, Heiskanen has been the engine of the Stars for the last five years.

Highly underrated too. As Dallas goes to game seven tomorrow night, the Seattle Kraken, the Stars can go as far as a healthy Heiskanen will take them. Arguably the team MVP for both the regular and post-seasons.

Other all-star defensemen throughout Dallas’ history include the likes of Sergei Zubov, Darryl Sydor, Stephanie Robidas, and John Klingberg, to name a few.

Vezina

Ed Belfour, Marty Turco, Ben Bishop, and Jake Oettinger. A few names who have put up great seasons in Dallas who did not get awarded by the voters. Nobody yet in Dallas’ history has won the award for the Vezina trophy.

Even in 2003, when Turco set the record at the time for modern-day GAA didn’t get voted for the Vezina and a record that has since been broken by Brian Elliot. Even with having a reputation for excellence in the net, the voters continue to pick around the Stars.

Calder Memorial

While there have been a couple of Calder Memorial trophies for Rookie of the Year for the Minnesota North Stars (Danny Grant 1969, Bobby Smith 1979), there are no winners of the award in Dallas.

At 19 years of age, Wyatt Johnston finished his first season tied with likely winner Matty Beniers of the Seattle Kraken with 24 goals. They didn’t get that nomination that three other guys did.

The Awards That Matter

So the Stars won’t be winning any subjective awards—nothing out of the ordinary to report there. Boston was, at minimum, nominated with seven NHL awards this year, and their season was a disappointment. If nothing else, winning these awards makes your team a meme if they don’t win come playoff time.

Dallas, in franchise history, has won awards that mean something, objectively speaking. The Stanley Cup, Conn Smythe, William Jennings, and Art Ross trophies all have made appearances on the Stars’ shelves. In the end, Stars fans will take the earned awards over the opinionated ones every time.

Currently, the Stars only care about figuring out the Kraken tomorrow night.