NCAA Hockey 101: Debating the Hobey Baker winner

Late last week, the Hobey Hat Trick was announced, and for the second year in a row, it seems as though the favorite is a freshman.

Michigan rookie Kyle Connor joined senior two-time finalist Jimmy Vesey of Harvard and Boston College junior netminder Thatcher Demko as the last three nominees standing. All have impressive résumés, to be sure. But unlike last year, when Jack Eichel was the clear favorite, there seems to be a lot of controversy about this award.

It's important, then, to contextualize the achievements each of these three players put together over the course of the season, and determine who actually deserves the award. I am on the record as believing that this award is Connor's to lose (that article was published in late February, and about a month and a half later he's only improved his numbers) but the pushback on such statements has been at least a little vociferous.

To that end, I'm going to try to look at both sides of the issue for not only Connor, but also Vesey and Demko, to determine which guy has the clearest case to win the award.

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We'll start with the least plausible candidate:

Thatcher Demko

The case for: For one thing he was effectively elite by any measure people use to evaluate goalies. Currently tied for second in the nation in save percentage at .936, one point back of Army's Parker Gahagen, and tied with Alex Lyon and Nick Ellis. He's fifth in minutes played, and 10th in percentage of his team's minutes played. Going back to the stats the matter a lot less, he's seventh in goals-against average (1.85), and third in both wins (27) and winning percentage (.763).

Perhaps most important, though, is that he has 10 shutouts this season, which is a huge number. It's ahead of the second-place goaltender (Quinnipiac's Michael Garteig) by 25 percent. It's also two shy of the national record.

As far as awards go, he was BC's best player in its regional run to the Frozen Four, winning Most Outstanding Player in Worcester thanks to allowing just three goals on 63 shots against Harvard and Minnesota-Duluth. But moreover, as far as the whole “body of work” goes, he split Hockey East Player of the Year with UMass Lowell goalie Kevin Boyle.

He is just a really, really good goaltender whose numbers would probably be even better if he hadn't gotten hurt for a few games earlier in the year. He's square to everything, very situationally aware, and has really improved at just about every aspect of his game since coming to Boston College at just 17.

The case against: Goalies don't win this award, as a general rule. And when they do, they have to be so far ahead of the pack that it's a little embarrassing for everyone else.

Case in point, Ryan Miller was the last goalie to win it, back in 2001. That year, he had a .950 save percentage. The next-closest guy in the nation came in at .931 in slightly more than half the TOI. That's an almost unbelievable gap, and the national save percentage that season was probably in the mid .900s (it's tough to say for sure because some leagues haven't published their stats from that season, but there were 42 goalies who played at least 10 games and had save percentages below .900, so there ya go).

As good as Demko has been — and I think he's been the best goalie in the nation this year, on the balance — he hasn't done much to separate himself from the pack. Even with college hockey getting tighter every year, it's still pretty impressive to go .930-plus, but 10 guys did it this year, and he's one of five to clear .935. Shutouts are nice and everything, but they happened against Wisconsin, Colorado College (twice), UMass (twice), Maine (twice), Notre Dame and BU. Only two of those teams made the tournament, and the rest were among the worst teams in the country. That's a quality-of-competition issue.

Again, still the best goalie, by a nose. Historically speaking he would have needed to be the best by about a mile to win.

Also, he is a senior, and Hobey voters historically favor that, for reasons unknowable.

Jimmy Vesey

The case for: For the second straight season he was the ECAC Player of the Year and Walter Brown Award winner (best American-born player in New England college hockey), and also got into the Hobey Hat Trick again.

He got all that praise by posting 24-22-46 in 33 games this year, finishing fourth in the nation in goals per game, and seventh in points per game. He also scored 15 of those goals at even-strength (six on power plays, one shorthanded, two into an empty net). And this wasn't a high-shooting-percentage thing, either — though his 16.2 percent was still quite high — because he generated the fifth-most shots on goal per game at 4.48. Also impressive: He took just three minor penalties all year.

And he did all this in the stingy ECAC which boasted a league save percentage of .913 overall when you take Harvard out of the mix (as Vesey was not shooting on his own goalies, obviously). That's a little better than the national average, but a few teams in the league (Yale, Quinnipiac, etc.) had some of the highest overall save percentages in the nation. It wasn't easy to score, but Vesey did it with aplomb anyway.

The case against: Unfortunately for Vesey this is the second year in a row in which a great year-long performance might not be good enough. Also unfortunately for Vesey, this is not a career achievement award, no matter how much people bring up how effective he was last year too. This is, in fact, a considerably lesser season than the one he posted in 2014-15 (32-26-58).

Like Demko, he's done little to separate himself from the rest of his positional peers in the field. His season was great, but not really exceptional in any particular way. And it's not like he piled up goals against good teams, either. He scored more or less indiscriminately. In nine games against NCAA tournament teams this year, Vesey piled up 2-4-6 and 29 shots on goal (3.22 per game), compared with 22-18-40 and 119 shots (4.96 per) in against non-tournament teams. Pretty consistent, but pretty unimpressive.

Is he a great college player? Absolutely. Is this season more worthy of a Hobey Baker than the one he posted last year? Nope.

Kyle Connor

The case for: National leader in goals (35), tied for third in assists (36), and first in points (71). The latter number is equal to what Jack Eichel posted last year when winning the Hobey Baker, in two extra games. First in goals per game, fifth in assists per game, first in points per game. He was also 13th in shots per game.

It's hard to actually verify this, but one cannot imagine there has recently been a season in which a forward who wasn't the national leader in both goals and total points won the Hobey Baker out from under someone who was (it happened a lot in the '80s, but that was when hockey was deeply weird).

Yeah, he beat up on a weak schedule, but this is just the third season in which someone has posted 70-plus points since the early 2000s. Granted, they've all come right in a row here, but the other two guys to do it (Eichel and Johnny Gaudreau before that) both won the Hobey.

The argument doesn't have to get much stronger than “He led the nation in goals and points by wide margins.”

The case against: Just as you have to acknowledge that Vesey scored a boatload of goals in a lower-scoring environment, you have to say that Connor very much benefited from his conference basically being the opposite. The Big Ten sans Michigan's numbers had a save percentage for the year of a dismal .897(!), which is pathetic in this day and age.

People have also pointed out that he plays on a line with two very talented players in Tyler Motte and JT Compher. Which is true. That makes it easier to score. (However, Compher's 63 points this year was up 162.5 percent from his 24 last season. Motte's 56 was an increase of 80.6 percent from 31 in 2014-15 as well. It's almost like good players benefit each other. I don't know, nor would Vesey, who plays with two non-bums named Kyle Criscuolo and Alex Kerfoot.)

But other than that, I don't know what your argument could be. It would be wrong to give it to a freshman for the second year in a row, maybe?

Connor should win it. Sorry.

A somewhat arbitrary ranking of teams which are pretty good in my opinion only (and just for right now but maybe for a little longer too?)

1. Quinnipiac (idle)

2. North Dakota (idle)

3. Boston College (idle)

4. Denver (idle)

5. UMass Lowell (idle)

6. Minnesota-Duluth (idle)

7. Michigan (idle)

8. Ferris State (idle)

9. Providence (idle)

10. Yale (idle)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist and also covers the NCAA for College Hockey News. His email is hereand his Twitter is here.