Dallas Stars: John Klingberg, Stars Missing from the NHL Awards

The NHL Awards are tonight and the Dallas Stars are yet again without a finalist for any of the league’s individual awards. This has to change going forward, but that means the whole team has to improve.

Tomorrow, the Dallas Stars will award their two team trophies at a ceremony in Farmer’s Branch, one for the season’s scoring leader and the other for the leader of the three stars of the game selections. Tonight, they’ll be conspicuously absent from the league-wide award ceremony in Las Vegas.

Last year, the Stars were in the same boat, but the year before was different. At the end of the team’s impressive 2015-16 regular season campaign where they ended up second in the league, they had three finalists for four awards: Jim Nill (GM of the Year), Lindy Ruff (Jack Adams), and Jamie Benn (Ted Lindsey and Hart). No new hardware was added to the trophy case at the end of the day, but there were still nominees from the Dallas Stars in attendance.

John Klingberg had the team’s strongest chance this year and was talked about as a possible finalist. He led defensemen scoring up until the end of the season when John Carlson passed him, ending up one point ahead of Klingberg.

More from Blackout Dallas

• Dallas Stars Traverse City Tournament: Who had great performances?
• Grushnikov and Stankoven lead Dallas Stars to 6-3 win over Columbus
• Dallas Stars prospects look to wrap up tournament with a win
• Burn the tapes: Dallas Stars prospects lose 5-1 to Toronto Maple Leafs
• Dallas Stars look to continue success today against the Maple Leafs

While Klingberg had a good case in the first half of the year which culminated in a lot of talk about his potential first Norris Trophy in January, he had a drop-off in February, notching only 6 points the entire month. His production picked back up again in March, but by that time, the team was struggling to win a single game.

The Norris trophy is not meant to be just for offensive defensemen and there are other metrics by which to measure a defenseman. However, the award has typically gone to guys who have high point totals. In three of the last five years, the player with the most points at the end of the season won the award. In 2015-16, Erik Karlsson led the scoring and ended up second in the voting. This year, the voting changed drastically. The Norris finalists were fifth, seventh, and ninth in defenseman scoring.

In other years, Klingberg would have likely been named a finalist. After the awards ceremony, fans will be able to see the voting totals, and perhaps Klingberg just missed the mark. Either way, it still signals a problem for the Dallas Stars: their top players aren’t getting league-wide recognition.

There’s two different ways to look at this problem. One, Dallas’ elite players simply aren’t playing like elite players. They need to earn that recognition and they aren’t doing enough for it. Two, the voting members of the PHWA are biased against smaller market teams in general, the Stars specifically, the players themselves, or some combination of those things.

Logically, it’s probably a little bit of both. There are going to be voters who are biased against the Stars and their players for whatever reason. This is true of any other team as well, though. It then becomes a matter of who has the least amount of voters biased against them, but this is probably not as much of a factor as some people may argue it is.

The awards may be individual awards, but at the end of the day, this is still a team sport and that factors in heavily. Sure, an elite player can be stuck on a struggling team and fans can argue that they’re still elite, and to an extent, they still are. However, without a good team to play with, that player isn’t going to be able to play to their full potential. On the flip side, a mediocre player on an otherwise amazing team is going to have better numbers than they would on a team of other mediocre players.

The Dallas Stars need to get their players back in the mix for individual awards, but to do that, they’re going to need to improve as a whole. That’s obviously the aim to begin with, but it’s easier said than done. If the team can succeed, the top players will have better years. Add to that the media attention that comes with success and Klingberg may get his Norris nomination.

Next: What Should The Stars Do With Each Of Their RFAs?

Klingberg had a strong year, but the team didn’t make the playoffs. That shouldn’t matter, but it does.