Premier League End-Of-Season Awards: NHL-Style
The Golden Boot, Golden Glove, Team of the Year and Player of the Year awards are great, but they don’t do the best job of telling the wider story of the Premier League season beyond the few key storylines at the very top of the league. Fortunately, the NHL has a much greater, and enviable collection of end-of-season awards so we can just steal them. Here’s the Premier League end-of-season awards, NHL-style.
I’m going to start with my favourite award, one that I’m all-in for the Premier League adopting…
Calder Memorial Trophy
Awarded to the player selected as most proficient in his first year of competition in the NHL.
This would make for a particularly interesting award for the Premier League given that it would cut across three areas; how well new signings to the league adapt to their new club and the league, how well youngsters fare that have been promoted to the first team, and the proficiency with which newly-promoted teams take to life the Premier League.
For this season’s award the primary contenders are Alisson Becker, new signing from Italy; Raul Jimenez, new signing from Portugal; and James Maddison, new signing from The Championship.
Each player has had a considerable impact on the Premier League in their first season in the league. Leicester City have quickly come to rely on James Maddison’s midfield production, having scored 7 goals, laid on 7 assists and lead the league in chances created (100) this season, beating out Eden Hazard (98), Ryan Fraser (93), Joao Moutinho (84) and Willian (79).
Raul Jimenez, coming to the Premier League from Benfica at the beginning of the campaign, has had a great first season in the Premier League for an equally great Wolves side. Raul Jimenez contributed 13 goals and 7 assists on the way to helping Wolves secure 7th position in their first season back in the Premier League. Not quite Charlie Austin levels of brilliance — who plundered 18 goals (43% of QPR’s total goals) and 7 assists for a newly-promoted QPR side that finished rock-bottom in 2014/15, outscored only by Sergio Aguero (26), Harry Kane (21) and Diego Costa (20) — but an hugely impressive season nonetheless, and enough to out-score Heung-Min Son, Roberto Firmino and Romelu Lukaku in both goals and assists.
However, the 2018/19 award has to go to Alisson Becker for his performance in goal for Liverpool this season, in a season in which he won the Golden Glove award and became only the third goalkeeper in Premier League history to keep 21 clean sheets in a season (behind Petr Cech (24) in 2004/05, and Edwin van der Sar (21) in 2008/09) and conceded only 22 league goals. Alisson has come in and had an huge impact in shoring up Liverpool’s somewhat creaky defence from last season, helping restrict Liverpool to a single defeat all season and the third highest points total in Premier League history.
1st — Allison Becker
2nd — Raul Jimenez
3rd — James Maddison
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Hart Memorial Trophy
Awarded to the player adjudged to be most valuable to his team, as selected by NHL writers.
Given the rather specific wording of this trophy there exists a bit of friction in interpretation between it being the NHL Writers’ MVP vote and literally being the player most valuable to his team. I like having separate players’ vote and writers’ vote awards (as the Premier League does), but I equally love the idea of an award for the player ‘most valuable to his team’, and so that’s how we’ll interpret it.
The presence of so many Manchester City attacking players among the challengers for this year’s FWA Footballer of the Year and PFA Players’ Player of the Year award automatically puts them all out of contention for the Hart. It’s hard to make a case for Raheem Sterling (or Sergio Aguero, or Bernardo Silva) being the most valuable player to his team in the league when three fellow City players were also nominated for either the PFA or FWA awards, and five teammates put up double figures in points this season.
Likewise, for Mane and Salah, both scoring 22 league goals this season neither is a real contender for the Hart Premier League Trophy. Among the other contenders for the FWA and PFA awards, Alexandre Lacazette is out of contention as a result of Aubameyang’s great season, leaving just Harry Kane and Eden Hazard.
Elsewhere Jamie Vardy continues to mix it with the best where goalscoring’s concerned, netting 18 this season, a full 35% of Leicester’s total goal tally. Hazard (25%) and Kane (25%) have also accounted for a considerable share of Chelsea’s and Tottenham’s goals this season. Matching Vardy’s contribution is Brighton’s Glen Murray whose 13 goals are 37% of Brighton’s tally this season.
When considering the most valuable player to his team we need to also take into account what the team has actually been able to achieve. In that sense, guiding your team to qualification for the Champions League or avoiding relegation are much more valuable than a mid-table, ninth placed finish as Leicester achieved. As such the award has to go to Eden Hazard who has fairly dragged Chelsea to a third-placed finish this season with his 16 goals and 15 assists. Pedro was a distant second in goals scored for Chelsea with 8 and played over a 1000 fewer minutes this season.
In second is Glen Murray, whose goals have directly contributed to 9 of Brighton’s points this season and had a hand in earning a further 10 points. That’s 19 of Brighton’s 36 points this season that Murray’s goals have contributed towards, an huge contribution in helping them avoid the drop again this season.
Third is Harry Kane, whose 17 goals helped Tottenham hold on to fourth place and thus Champions League qualification. Tottenham had a very strong first half of the season, but despite the efforts of Heung-Min Son and Lucas Moura in the latter part of the season, Tottenham struggled down the stretch with a thin squad and a lack of fire-power, noticeably struggling without their talisman upfront.
1st — Eden Hazard
2nd — Glen Murray
3rd — Harry Kane
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Ted Lindsay Award
Awarded to the “most outstanding player” in the NHL as voted by fellow members of the NHLPA.
The PFA Players’ Player of the Year equivalent, and worthily won by Virgil van Dijk this season. A true leader of the team, has brought confidence and calm to a previously shaky Liverpool defence. Incredible poise, reading of the game and composure. His performances this year have been outstanding, without a doubt the best defender in the game right now.
Winner — Virgil van Dijk
Shortlist — Raheem Sterling, Bernardo Silva, Sergio Aguero, Sadio Mane, Eden Hazard
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Jack Adams Award
Presented to the coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team’s success.
Given the historical greatness of both Liverpool and Manchester City this year, this award was always going to be decided by whichever of the two teams ended up winning the title. Jurgen Klopp and his Liverpool side were able to turn 75 points and a fourth-place finish last season into a 97 point, second-place finish this season. An historic season, the third-highest points total in Premier League history. Consequently, in order to retain their Premier League title Manchester City were forced to post the second highest points total in Premier League history, ending a single point ahead of Liverpool with 98 points, second only to their record-breaking 100-point season last year.
Pep Guardiola has raised the bar in the Premier League to a whole new level, with a beautifully efficient brand of attacking football that very few can live with. A worthy winner of his second Premier League title and the Jack Adams Award.
Somewhat overshadowed by these two historically great teams and their fantastic managers, but no less deserving of a spot on the shortlist for the Jack Adams Award is Nuno Espirito Santo. In the strongest showing by a newly-promoted team in recent years, Santo was able to guide Wolves to a seventh-place finish, ahead of a strong midfield pack of Leicester City, Everton, West Ham and Watford. Wolves’ performances against the top six in particular were a hallmark of their season, only failing to take points off of Liverpool. This included home victories against Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United, and 1–1 draws in the reverse fixtures against the same three teams. Add to these results a 3–1 away victory against Spurs and a 1–1 draw at home to City, and that’s a total of 16 points taken from the top six.
Wolves somewhat let themselves down by taking only a single point away from home against the bottom six (including home and away defeats to Huddersfield without scoring a single goal), but finished the season having beaten 15 of the 19 teams, failing to take a point from just Liverpool and Huddersfield.
1st — Pep Guardiola
2nd — Jurgen Klopp
3rd — Nuno Espirito Santo
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Maurice Richard Trophy
Awarded to the NHL’s top goal scorer.
This season ended in a three-way tie for the Golden Boot (aka the Maurice Richard Trophy), with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane each chalking up 22 goals for the season. This is the first time we’ve had a three-way tie for the Golden Boot since back-to-back seasons in 1997/98 and 1998/99, when 18 goals were shared between Chris Sutton, Dion Dublin and Michael Owen in 97/98 and Dwight Yorke, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Michael Owen again in 98/99. The winning tally of 22 is an eight-year low, and not since Dimitar Berbatov and Carlos Tevez shared the award in 2010–11 with 20 goals apiece has the award been won with fewer than 25 goals. On top of that only once this century has a player failing to reach the 20-goal mark won the award — Nicolas Anelka with 19 goals for Chelsea in 2008–09.
What’s notable this year, beyond the three-way tie at the top, is the sheer number of goalscorers in the Premier League, with 32 players reaching double figures this season. For the last three seasons this number has sat steadfastly at 21.
One major contributing factor is the fact that 17 of the 20 teams this season had a 10+ goal goalscorer in their side. The second aspect is the abundance of great strike partnerships. On top of Liverpool’s now-hallowed triumvirate, Manchester City and Spurs also had three players each hit the 10-goal mark, whilst Manchester United had four. Arsenal, Newcastle, Bournemouth and Burnley rekindled the joy of the double strike partnership, helping both players rack up a double figure goal tally. The unorthodox pair of Gylfi Sigurdsson and Richarlison chalked up 13 goals apiece this season for Everton, whilst Wilfried Zaha made it to 10 goals for Crystal Palace, but finished second to Luka Milivojevic on 12. The remainder of clubs were fired home by lone rangers — the irrepressible Jamie Vardy with 18 goals, Eden Hazard the only man to break 10 for Chelsea (although Giroud was able to chalk up 10 goals in 13 Europa League appearances this season, with the final still to play), Jimenez with 13 for newly-promoted Wolves, Glenn Murray’s 13 goals crucial in Brighton’s survival and Mitrovic’s 11 for Fulham not enough to save a disappointing Fulham side.
1st — Mohamed Salah: 22
1st — Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang: 22
1st — Sadio Mane: 22
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Art Ross Trophy
Awarded to the player who leads the National Hockey League in scoring points at the end of the regular season.
Total points, that is goals and assists. I love this metric and think it should become much more of a mainstream football metrics — and yes, even given its own award.
Salah topped the goalscoring charts but was ousted in this award by Eden Hazard, who put up 16 goals and 15 assists for a total of 31 points, one ahead of Mohammed Salah on 30. Hazard lead the league in assists, followed closely by Bournemouth’s Ryan Fraser on 14. Christian Eriksen, Liverpool wing-backs Alexander-Arnold and Robertson, and City pair Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling also made it into double figures for assists.
There’s an interesting comparison to be made here between Liverpool’s front three. Salah has been the primary goalscorer since joining the club at the start of last season — netting 32 and 22 goals respectively — although Mane has upped his scoring output (10 goals last season, 22 this season) this season to match Salah. However, Salah has put on 8 assists this year (and 10 last season) to Mane’s 1 (7 last year). Roberto Firmino has played a consistent role around them, contributing 22 points last year and 18 points this year. From this angle, whilst Firmino sits some way off in the goalscoring charts, his points output this season isn’t far off Mane’s.
1st — Eden Hazard: 31
2nd — Mohamed Salah: 30
3rd — Sergio Aguero: 29
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Frank J. Selke Trophy
Awarded to the forward who best excels in the defensive aspects of the game.
Which attacking player contributes the most defensively in the Premier League? Some attacking players are good at and/or selected to track back and slot into the defensive shape, some are good at pressurising the defence high-up and causing turnovers, whilst others play on teams that sit deep and cede position making defence a large part of their game.
Given this, each player’s defensive contribution is best calculated by the number of defensive actions they’ve carried out this season. The defensive actions in consideration here are: tackles, interceptions, passes blocked, crosses blocked and shots blocked.
Using these metrics one attacking player sticks out head and shoulders above the rest for his defensive output: West Ham’s Felipe Anderson. Anderson made a total of 207 defensive actions this season, with his biggest contribution coming through tackling where he placed tenth in the league with 89, an average of 2.5 tackles per game. Will Hughes, closely followed by Ayoze Perez, came in second and third respectively.
Perez and Anderson in particular, have proved to be great two-way players this season, with strong defensive output and significant offensive output to match, with 14 and 13 points respectively this season
1st — Felipe Anderson: 207
2nd — Will Hughes: 162
3rd — Ayoze Perez: 161
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Vezina Trophy
Awarded to the goalkeeper adjudged to be the best at his position.
Ederson was rightly selected to fill the goalkeeper slot in the PFA Team of the Year. However, Alisson conceded one fewer goal this season (22 vs 23), kept one more clean sheet (21 vs 20) and ended up making 18 more saves (76 vs 58). Nonetheless Ederson is fully deserving of the Vezina Trophy, displaying a masterclass in distribution, command of the box and making important saves this season — and let’s not forget he has an assist to his name too.
Lukasz Fabianski tops the charts this year for volume of saves with 148, whilst Alisson leads the way for the number of saves per goal conceded at 3.5 (compared to Ederson’s 2.5). Third in terms of number of goals conceded (33) and second in saves per goal conceded (3.0) is Hugo Lloris, earning himself third in the Vezina rankings.
1st — Ederson Moraes
2nd — Alisson Becker
3rd — Hugo Lloris
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William M. Jennings Trophy
Awarded to the goalkeeper(s) having played a minimum of 25 games for the team with the fewest goals scored against it.
2018–19 winners of the (actual) award, Robin Lehner and Thomas Greiss played 46 and 43 games respectively for the New York Islanders, conceding a league-best 191 goals across the regular season. This is a shared award by virtue of the fact that goaltending duties are commonly shared amongst more than one goaltender (8 if you’re Philadelphia) — no goaltender has ever played a full season’s worth of games.
Applied to the Premier League, where having a first-choice goalkeeper is the norm, this award becomes purely an individual award for the goalkeeper that has conceded the fewest goals across the season. To ensure we have a rightful winner, and not Willy Caballero (1 game, 0 goals conceded) or the likes of Angus Gunn (12 games, 18 goals conceded) who took over the number one spot midway through the season, a goalkeeper will have to have played at least 29 games (75%) to qualify.
Alisson Becker had this award wrapped up by the end of 2018, going into the game at the Etihad against title-rivals City on 3rd January, he had kept 12 clean sheets and conceded only 8 goals from the first 20 games of the season. Ederson, his only realistic contender at this point was considerably behind in the stakes, 4 clean sheets back, and a total of 8 goals behind.
Having conceded 16 goals in his first 20 games however, Ederson would come out of that 2–1 victory over Liverpool on the 3rd January and concede only 7 goals across the remaining 17 games of the season, recording 12 clean sheets in the process. Meanwhile, Alisson, having conceded 2 at City, would go on to concede a further 12 goals in the tail-end of the season, taking his tally to 22 goals conceded for the season, bettering Ederson’s tally of 23 by one, courtesy of Glen Murray’s front-post header on the final day of the season.
Hugo Lloris finished a distant third, conceding 33 goals.
1st — Alisson Becker: 22
2nd — Ederson Moraes: 23
3rd — Hugo Lloris: 33
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James Norris Memorial Trophy
Awarded to the defenseman who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position.
Having won PFA Players’ Player of the Year, Virgil van Dijk was not only the best defender in the league this season, but one of the best, if not the best, player in the league. On top of his imperious defensive displays this season he also contributed 4 goals and 4 assists for good measure. As such the James Norris Memorial is a cakewalk for VVD, adding another gong to his personal trophy cabinet.
Behind him Aymeric Laporte stood out as the centrepiece in a slick and commanding City defence as they kept 12 clean sheets in the second half of the season on their unstoppable charge to retain their title. Laporte also contributed 3 goals and 3 assists at the other end. Rounding out the top 3 for the James Norris Memorial is another Liverpool defender, left wing-back Andy Robertson. Both Liverpool wing-backs have been phenomenal this year, contributing to the stingiest defence in the league whilst also contributing in buckets going forward. Trent Alexander-Arnold registered 13 assists and a goal this season, whilst Andy Robertson made 12 assists, with the pair proving pivotal in feeding Salah and Mane at the vanguard of the Liverpool attack. Robertson in particular this season has showed how much he’s developed his whole game since arriving at Anfield under the tutelage of Jurgen Klopp, and looks every bit the best wing-back in the league.
1st — Virgil van Dijk
2nd — Aymeric Laporte
3rd — Andy Robertson
