Thursday, March 14, 2013

WCHA Post-Season Awards
Well for the first time in our blog's young life, we had the honor to fill out a ballot for WCHA post-season awards (huge shout-out to Tradition of Excellence for inviting us to take part).  If you guys haven't checked out his blog and are Sioux fans, I strongly advise you to do so.  I've always respected the bloggers and beat writers that post their ballots online, so I've decided to follow suit. 
1st Team:
F - Ryan Walters - Omaha
F - Danny Kristo - UND
F - Drew LeBlanc - St. Cloud
D - Nate Schmidt - Minnesota
D - Nick Jensen - St. Cloud
G - Stephon Williams
2nd Team:
F - Corban Knight - UND
F - Eric Haula - Minnesota
F - Josh Archibald - Omaha
D - Mike Boivin - CC
D - Joey Laleggia - Denver
G - Juho Olkinoura - Denver
3rd Team:
F - Rylan Schwartz - CC
F - Matt Leitner - Mankato
F - Eriah Hayes - Mankato
D - Jake McCabe - Wisconsin
D - Dillon Simpson - UND
G - Adam Wilcox - Minnesota
All-Rookie Team:
F - Tony Cameranesi - Duluth
F - Rocco Grimaldi - UND
F - Alex Petan - Michigan Tech
D - Andy Welinski - Duluth
D - Nolan Zajac - Denver
G - Stephon Williams - Mankato
Player of the Year - Ryan Walters
Defensive Player of the Year - Nate Schmidt
Rookie of the Year - Tony Cameranesi
Coach of the Year - Mike Hastings
Goalie of the year - Stephon Williams
Well I couldn't have picked a more difficult year to fill out my first ballot.  There were so many players that could be on this list. The all-rookie and rookie of the year might have been the toughest.  Both Brodzinski (St. Cloud) and Farley (Duluth) could have been in this group and any of those players could have won ROY.  Ultimately, I had to give the edge to Cameranesi as he had to jump right into a first line center role and did it remarkably well.  My apologies to Nick Bjugstad.  As one of my pre-season Hobey Baker picks, he was the hardest to leave off.  However, I couldn't put him in front of the nine forwards I chose.  Finally, my one homer pick goes to Dillon Simpson.  He might not get as much of the praise, but he is playing on the top pairing on the 3rd place team in the league and has put up a career high 21 points.  Andrew Prochno or Andrej Sustr made that decision very difficult.


3 comments:

  1. You should take up another hobbie

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  2. You had some of it right except the rookies, you put Gramaldi on there insted of St Clouds Brodzinski he should have been the first on the list, this isnt a popularity contest Brodzinski leads THE COUNTRY in three catigories with out being on the first line or the PP all year like Camernessi. He leads the counrty in plus minus + 28 and 5 on 5 goals with 20 and leads all freshman with 21 goals. ALL while being a true freshman at 19 years old Gramaldi lost the right last year

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  3. Not taking anything away from Brodzinski; he had a fantastic season (as did about 6 rookie forwards). I feel ok about my forward picks since they ended up being identical to the coaches picks. I appreciate the feedback (as always).

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