Saturday, January 06, 2007

St Louis Having A Good Season

Martin St Louis won the Hart Trophy and the Stanley Cup in 2004. It was a huge successs for a player who went undrafted and struggled for many years to establish himself as an NHLer (he was 25 before he played his first complete NHL season with no trips to the minors). Then the lockout happened. St Louis lost a season of his NHL career and it took a while for him to get back on track. His 2005/06 season was a solid unspectacular year, but this was a dissapointment for the reigning NHL MVP.

This year, St Louis is back playing at all star level. He is tied for thew NHL goal lead with Marian Hossa with 26 goals. He leads the NHL's forwards in ice time per game (with 24:26 per game). St Louis is a workhorse for Tampa Bay and doing a very good job.

I believe that the lockout may have helped to prevent St Louis from a Hall of Fame career. He lost a season (and a lot of momentum) during what should have been the prime of his career. His Hall of Fame chances also suffer due to the late start of his NHL career - as it should prevent him from achieving great career totals. I think he will go down with Jeremy Roenick as a player who likely loses out on what would otherwise have been a Hall of Fame career due to the loss of opportunity in the lockout.

Martin St Louis is one of the better players in the NHL right now and is showing he his far from a one year wonder.

Comments:
He won't have the career totals to make the hall of fame so he will have to have several more outstanding years and maybe another MVP win. If Tampa was a better team he might get consideration this year but I am not sure they will make the playoffs and that will probably cost him any chance at much MVP consideration. I don't see that happening though but at least St. Louis is showing that 2003-04 wasn't a fluke as he should better his goal and point totals if he has a second half like his first half of the season.

On a related note, Vincent Lecavalier is having a break out year. His best season so far has been 33g, 78pts which is 12 points better than his second best season. He already has 23g, 53 points this year.

Now if they could just get Richards to come close to justifying his salary and find a decent goalie the Lightning might be a good team again.
 
نبات
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?