The top team in the BCHL has been shut out when it comes to individual awards.
The league announced the winners of six trophies Tuesday afternoon.
The most surprising result had Merritt’s Joe Martin beating out Chilliwack’s Brian Maloney for the Joe Tennant Memorial Award as coach of the year. Not that Martin wasn’t a deserving recipient after guiding the Centennials to the third-best record in the BCHL (36-15-4-3), but Maloney had a very strong case after leading one of the league’s youngest rosters to a regular season championship (42-15-1-0) in what was supposed to be a rebuilding year.
Chilliwack’s Kevin Wall was up for two awards.
Losing the Vern Dye Memorial Trophy as MVP wasn’t too surprising. Wall collected an impressive 31 goals and 64 points in 49 games, but he wasn’t beating Victoria’s Alex Newhook, who collected 38 more points (53-38-64-102) and finished 18 points ahead of Powell River’s Ryan Brushett in the BCHL points parade.
Wall had a better case to make for the Bruce Allison Memorial Trophy as rookie of the year.
That went to Newhook’s teammate, Alexander Campbell, who had three more points than Wall (53-21-46-67) while playing four more games.
Had Wall not sat out the last two games of the regular season after Chilliwack clinched first overall, he likely would have at least tied Campbell. As it is, Wall finished ahead of the Grizzly in points-per-game (1.31 to 1.26), but when you consider Campbell is a year younger, the award was a coin flip.
Other major award winners were Penticton’s James Miller as top defenceman, Penticton’s Jack LaFontaine as top goalie and West Kelowna’s Mike Hardman as most sportsmanlike player.