Who Should Win the 2021 Jack Adams Award?
All the regular season grand prize finalists have been announced, which means its time for the NHL to announce winners. That starts Monday with the King Clancy Memorial Trophy awarded to one of Kurtis Gabriel, Pekka Rinne, and PK Subban. Its hard for fans to really know the nuances of each finalist for the first three awards to be announced next week. The King Clancy and Masterton are given to players for their off-ice interactions and leadership as much as their performance throughout the season. The Willie ORee, which is awarded on Wednesday, is given to a community hero. So lets look a few days ahead to Thursday and the Jack Adams Award to see what the PHR community thinks should be done. The year before BrindAmour took the helm behind the Carolina bench, the Hurricanes werent very good. Even though they had strong performances from young players like Sebastian Aho |, Teuvo Teravainen, and Jacob Slavin, the team did not have the goaltending to enter the tough Metropolitan Division, where five teams finished with at least 97 points. Carolina finished the year with a 36-35-11 record and missed the playoffs. Assistant Rod took over (along with several major trades to shake up the roster) and the team got underway. Three years later, BrindAmour is a Jack Adams finalist after a 36-12-8 regular season, finishing third in the NHL. Evason performed perhaps an even more impressive turnaround in Minnesota. Sure, the Wild made the playoffs six seasons in a row from 2012-2018, but the core that brought them to many of those post-season appearances was long gone or in dramatic decline by the time he took over in 2020. He just had a sneak peek during the 2019-20 season before COVID shut things down, but it was clearly a good move for the Wild to bring him back. A year after losing four games to the Vancouver Canucks in the bubble qualifier, Minnesota was reborn under Evason as an exciting, must-watch hockey club. Kirill Kaprisov has a lot to do with that transformation, but so does the starting head coach, who posted the best win percentage in Wilds history this season at .670. Minnesotas 35-16-5 record put them together with Tampa Bay for eighth best in the league, but they were just unlucky to face the powerhouse Vegas Golden Knights in the first round (and pushed them to their limits to to start). Quenneville was lucky to have one of the best young cores in the league, anyone could have won those Cups with Chicago said many of his opponents when he signed a huge contract with the Panthers in 2019. Maybe that young Blackhawks core was lucky to have him too. The legendary head coach had another excellent year behind the bench, using some clever front office moves from Bill Zito to take the Panthers to the fourth-best record in the NHL. Incredibly, Floridas 0.705 point percentage this season is the second highest in Quennevilles Hall of Fame career, trailing only the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season (which happened to end pretty well). Of course, these werent the only strong head coach performances this season. The New York Islanders recent playoff run would probably make it Barry Trotsky the favorite, but of course its a regular season price. Mike Sullivan of the Pittsburgh Penguins sustained injuries across almost his entire roster and put his club in a position to do some damage in the postseason. Even someone like Rick Bowness in Dallas should get some credit for managing a winning record in a year when almost everything went wrong for the Stars (imagine a handful of those 14 overtime/shootout losses had their way). So, PHR stalwarts, we ask you who you would give the Jack Adams to this season. Cast your vote and make sure to explain in the comments! Take our poll  [Mobile users click here to vote]