With just seven games remaining and eight points to make up in the standings, the Vancouver Canucks’ season is essentially over. But there are still some housekeeping details to take care of.
One of those details is the Canucks’ team awards, which will be announced on April 16 during the team’s Fan Appreciation Night. The Canucks have opened up the voting for the awards, with the voting closing on April 8.
But let’s be honest: the voting seems like a formality. Every single award should simply be given to Quinn Hughes.
One of the great injustices of the 2024-25 NHL season is how good Hughes has been with nothing to show for it. He’s third among NHL defencemen in points despite missing 14 games and playing with a cadre of Canucks forwards who seemingly forgot how to score goals. He carried the Canucks all season and, if not for his untimely injury, would have carried them all the way to the playoffs.
The time he missed and the ramifications from his injuries mean he’ll likely miss out on winning back-to-back Norris Trophies, not to mention the opportunity to be the first defenceman to win the Hart Trophy in 25 years. As a consolation prize, he ought to sweep the Canucks’ team awards.
Cyrus H. McLean Trophy for the team’s leading scorer
Let’s kick things off with the awards that the fans don’t vote for, starting with the Cyrus H. McLean Trophy.
For the first time in franchise history, a defenceman will finish the season as the Canucks’ leading scorer, as Quinn Hughes has far outpaced every forward on the team. Brock Boeser is the closest behind Hughes, and he has 24 fewer points, which is absolutely wild and makes the captain’s scoring pace all the more impressive.
Three Stars Award
The Three Stars Award is a pretty simple one: whoever gets named to the three stars after a game the most during the season wins the award. It’s not weighted by whether a player is first, second, or third star.
Unsurprisingly, Hughes has the lead for this award. He’s been named as one of the three stars 15 times this season, which actually seems a little low. The issue is that the Canucks haven’t won enough games and so opposing players have more often been the three stars of the game.
Hughes does have some competition. Kevin Lankinen has been named as one of the stars 14 times this season, so could tie or pass Hughes in the remaining games. But Lankinen has been named one of the three stars just once in the past two months, both because he has struggled in recent games and because of the return of Thatcher Demko.
Elias Pettersson is next best on the Canucks, having been named a star ten times. If he returns and dazzles in the final few games, he technically has a chance to catch Hughes, but let’s be real: that’s not going to happen.
The odds are that Hughes will hold on to win this award.
Daniel & Henrik Sedin Award for Community Leadership
The last award that isn’t voted by the fans is the Daniel & Henrik Sedin Award, which was introduced in 2019 to honour a Canuck who has made humanitarian contributions to the community. It is selected by Canucks staff members who see what the players do behind the scenes.
This is one where neither the media nor the fans see what players have done but Hughes, as the Canucks’ captain, has taken the responsibility for community leadership on his shoulders. He won the award last year after introducing his Team 43 program that donates tickets to fire fighters and other first responders and raises money for the BC Professional Fire Fighters’ Burn Fund.
It’s an initiative that continued this past season, though it was less publicized.
The award could certainly go to another player whose work in the community has not been discussed publicly, but it could also go to Hughes for the second-straight year.
Cyclone Taylor Trophy for Most Valuable Player
Let’s move on to the fan-voted awards. I think everyone can agree that Quinn Hughes is the Canucks’ most valuable player this season.
He was also their most valuable player last season, but the fans voted for J.T. Miller, who, in fairness, had a fantastic season. But there’s no way anyone other than Hughes can win it this year.
Walter “Babe” Pratt Trophy for Best Defenceman
Quinn Hughes has won this award for five-straight seasons and will likely continue to win it every single season he plays for the Canucks. Moving on.
Pavel Bure Award for Most Exciting Player
Is anyone on the Canucks more exciting than Quinn Hughes? Absolutely not.
Somehow, Hughes has never won this award, which seems silly. Hughes is worth the price of admission all by himself, and Canucks tickets are expensive, so that’s saying a lot.
Fred J. Hume Award for Unsung Hero
We’ve finally gotten to an award for which a legitimate argument could be made that Quinn Hughes should not win it.
After all, the Fred J. Hume Award is meant for a player whose praises have been unsung: a player who doesn’t get anywhere near enough credit for his impact on the ice, who contributes in ways that might go unnoticed. This is an award that isn’t meant for stars.
There’s a certain oxymoronic nature to this award, as it never goes to a true unsung hero, as a player has to have his praises sung at least a little bit for fans to agree on voting for him.
The players “nominated” for the award — players who can be voted for without writing in their name — are Kiefer Sherwood, Pius Suter, Teddy Blueger, Tyler Myers, Kevin Lankinen, and Derek Forbort. The likely favourites are Sherwood, Suter, and Lankinen, all of whom have had their praises sung to the rafters this season but, since they’re not star players, they can qualify as unsung.
But an argument can be made that Hughes fits the criteria for the award more than anyone else. Yes, Hughes has been recognized as a star, winning the Norris Trophy last season as the NHL’s best defenceman. His praises have been sung in three-part harmony for a couple of seasons now.
And yet, Hughes’s praises haven’t been sung anywhere near enough.
Hughes is the only thing that has made the Canucks at all watchable this season, which is one of the greatest feats in NHL history given how dreary the team has been.
Sure, Kiefer Sherwood set an NHL record for the most hits in a season and deserves an award of some sort for that but at least consider writing in Quinn Hughes instead.
