Colorado center Matt Duchene, Detroit goalie Jimmy Howard and Buffalo defenseman Tyler Myers are the finalists for the Calder Trophy, given to the NHL’s top rookie.
Who would get your vote – we’ve left Rask on the list for fun.
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None of these come as any surprise, but it still leaves me wondering – how does the goalie with the best GAA and save % in the league not get included in this list? Howard absolutely deserves it, this is no knock against him at all. But when lots of people had Rask on their Vezina list, how does he not make the Calder list?
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6 Responses to Howard in the running for Calder, Rask not
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If I had to guess it would be the amount of games he played??
I guess I should clarify…I was talking about why Rask isn’t up for Calder
The number of games shouldn’t matter as Rask had competition all season long from a guy holding the Vezina trophy. Osgood hasn’t been in his prime in a while, it’s not like Howard had to fight for the job.
Ok so I did a little research;
Rask: 45GP 22-12-5 .931 SV%, 1.97GAA
Howard 63GP 37-15-10 .924 SV% 2.26GAA
I would guess that games played is for sure the difference of why Rask isn’t up for Calder, he just didn’t get enough play time. Howard playe din almost 20 more games, and had numbers that are somewhat close to Rask’s
Don’t ask me why he is in the running for the Vezina and not the Calder though, I would assume that the amount of games played would be more critical for the Vezina, but who knows. The 2 trophies are voted on differently too, which is what I am assuming is the difference here. (NHL GM’s vote on the Vezina, the Calder is voted on by the Hockey Writer’s Association)
Aeio,
True, but Thomas hasn’t played like a Vezina winner AT ALL this season, it was an easy decision to let Rask in games.
And Howard was given a chance and he took it and ran with it. Different paths with like results.
The Vezina isn’t about how hard you had to fight for your games, and Rask I don’t think will stand a chance against people with 45 wins in a season like Brodeur.
A good GAA and SV% is nice, but there is always that doubt of “What if he played 65 games like the rest of the starters?” Would his stats be as good then? Would he be tired and start to play poorly?
So far Rask is just a rookie, who fought his way to a starting goalie over last years vezina winner, was number one in the league in both save % and GAA (being the only goalie to exceed .930 sv% and with a GAA less than 2) and won this years forthcoming vezina winner in the first round of stanley cup play offs. No nominations though. Apparently he has not played well enough even to be in the top three of rookies. I wonder what he could have done better…