clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

2012 NHL Awards: Evgeni Malkin Wins Hart Trophy

Evgeni Malkin was rewarded for his dominant season with three honors at the 2012 NHL Awards, including the Hart Trophy for most valuable player.

Getty Images

Penguins center Evgeni Malkin won the Hart Trophy, the Art Ross Trophy and the Ted Lindsay Award Wednesday night.

The Hart, for most valuable player, is obviously the big one, and Malkin got 144 ballots out of 149, easily defeating runner-up Steven Stamkos and third-place finisher Henrik Lundqvist.

The Art Ross Trophy honors the league's scoring leader. The Ted Lindsay Award is for the league's best player in the regular season, as determined by the players themselves.

Malkin had 50 goals and 59 assists this season, frequently carrying the Penguins as they were without Sidney Crosby. There were entire games where he seemed to be in control thoughout.

"With Geno this year, the amazing part of what he was doing is that the other players, both his teammates and the other players in the League, (were) repeatedly saying things about how dominant and how special and how awesome some of the things he was doing on the ice," said Penguins coach Dan Bylsma, who was in attendance at the Awards show. "How he was taking over games. How he was playing an almost unstoppable type of game. That's what Evgeni was for almost two-thirds of the year and you could see it in his own teammates and other players looking at him and the reaction of how special it is what he's doing on the ice."

Lundqvist won the Vezina Trophy as the league's top goaltender. Ottawa's Erik Karlsson won the Norris Trophy as the NHL's top defender. The Blues' Ken Hitchcock was the Jack Adams Award for the league's best coach. Gabriel Landeskog of the Avalanche won the Calder Trophy, the award for rookies.

For more on the Penguins, check out PensBurgh. For more on the NHL awards, check out SB Nation's NHL hub.

Photographs by dizfunk used in background montage under Creative Commons. Thank you.