NHL Looking to Change Direction With Awards Ceremony

The NHL is looking to add a new level of entertainment when it comes to their award ceremony.

Jun 27, 2024; Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Nathan MacKinnon was awarded the Hart Trophy and the Ted Lindsay Award during the 2024 NHL Awards at Fontainebleau Las Vegas. Mandatory Credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images / Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images

The NHL is always looking to produce an entertaining product, especially for their premiere events like the Winter Classic, All-Star Game, or Stadium Series. Even the crucial off-ice events like the draft or the NHL Awards ceremony are meant to have a fair bit of entertainment value.

In recent memory, the NHL Awards ceremony hasn’t been capturing the attention of their audience. Fans just want to know who wins which award but also must be entertained by the product they’re seeing.

With that in mind, the NHL is likely pivoting to a new format for their award show. According to Elliotte Friedman on Sportsnet’s Saturday Headlines, the league is looking to experiment with the “element of surprise.”

“There’s no official show as we have seen it over the last little while,” Friedman said.

Friedman went on to mention that the NHL is looking to draw inspiration from the NFL and their reigning MVP Josh Allen. Shortly after Allen was announced as the league’s most valuable player, he was shown a video of kids in a Buffalo hospital congratulating him on his award.

“The NHL looked at this video and said, ‘maybe we can do something like this,’” Friedman said. “What they are going for is the element of surprise. Instead of the children in this particular case, congratulating Allen, maybe you can have them inform an NHL player that he has won an award.”

Adding a massive dose of heartfelt and sentimental value to the award ceremony would be a huge change from its usual format. Normally, the NHL has handled their awards show much like any other; everyone in a big auditorium, nominees are announced, and winners on stage giving brief speeches.

It’s an old school way of doing things, but one that is done 100 time over in the entertainment industry. This new direction would be a much-needed change of pace for the NHL.

“It could be maybe a friend, or a relative, or a mentor of an NHL player showing up to present them an award,” Friedman said laying out the options. “Maybe it’s something like a prank… it’s because you won this award.”

Friedman states that the process of announcing nominees and award winners should kick off during the Stanley Cup Playoffs which are under a month away. Some of the biggest awards like the Hart Trophy for league MVP could still get a pre-produced show to air during the Stanley Cup Final.

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