It really is a new golden age for the NHL.

Used to be that there would be a few awards and a ton of random fourth-place votes every single year where you just had no clue what the hockey writers, or broadcasters, or GMs were thinking when they made a selection. You'd see some guy get a fourth-place Norris vote and then look it up and he had like a 42-percent xGF share. Corey Perry won an MVP once. It was weird for a long time.

That doesn't happen much anymore. Maybe it's because the voting group is younger, not quite so made up of Hockey Men, and “smarter (which in this case means “more inclined to have the same opinion as me, personally)." Maybe it's because it's easier than ever to watch every team at least a few times a season. Maybe it's because we have better stats or whatever.

But go do