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NHL Award winners for Hart, Calder spoiled by TSN sleuthing

After Friday night’s first batch of NHL Awards (a.k.a. the Technical Achievement Oscars), the rest of the hardware will be handed out before Saturday night’s Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final in Chicago.

Since the awards are a complete bust as an event thanks to the lockout, leaks are a thing this season. We already know P.K. Subban of the Montreal Canadiens will win the Norris Trophy as top defenseman. Now, via TSN’s Insider Trading (s/t Kukla), we have more awards spoilers.

TSN’s Bob McKenzie has a feeling he knows who the rookie of the year is:

“The NHL had no choice but to inform players that they’d won. It’s usually a big secret: They don’t know until the envelope is pulled in Las Vegas. Can’t do that this year.”

“[When Subban’s Norris leaked] lot of the drama was went out of it. In fact, Subban is the Norris Trophy winner. And now we’re hearing word that Jonathan Huberdeau will be in Chicago on Saturday. You can infer from that that the Florida Panther forward is going to be the rookie of the year.”

The big prize, obviously, is the Hart Trophy for regular season MVP. In the same segment, Darren Dreger noted that nominees Sidney Crosby and John Tavares won’t be in Chicago, and that Alex Ovechkin’s “acceptance speech will be via videotape.” So that would appear to be a Hart Trophy spoiler, as Dreger says he's "believed to be the winner."

Maybe you hate NHL Awards, or maybe you dig them. Either way, it’s a bummer that these moments of achievement are simply afterthoughts this season.

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