Kudos to the Caps PR staff for putting together a great list of the historical significances of the various outcomes when the League hands out the rest of its hardware on Thursday night. Impress your friends by dropping some knowledge on 'em and acting like it's no big thing:If Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Bruce Boudreau all win the awards for which they're finalists...
- The Capitals would be the first team ever to have the League's most valuable player, rookie of the year and coach of the year in the same season (the Jack Adams Award was first handed out in 1974).
- It would be the second consecutive year and only the second time since 1963-64 that one team had the MVP and RoY (you know who pulled it off last year, but may not know that back in 1964 it was Montreal's Jean Beliveau (Hart) and Jacques Laperriere (Calder)).
- It would be the seventh time that the Adams winner was the Hart winner's bench boss (John Tortorella and Martin St. Louis were the most recent duo to fit the bill back in 2004)
- He'll be the Caps' first recipient of either award;
- He'll be the first professional athlete for a Washington, D.C. team to win an MVP award in 25 years (Joe Theismann was the NFL's MVP back in 1983); and
- He'll be the second Russian to win either award and the first since Sergei Fedorov won both for the 1993-94 Red Wings.
- He'll be the first player ever to win the Hart and the Calder Trophy within a three-season span. [read that one again before proceeding]; and
- He'll be only the fourth player ever to have won both the Calder and Hart Trophies (Bobby Orr, Bryan Trottier and Mario Lemieux are the others).
- He'll be the fourth player this decade to win both in the same season (Sidney Crosby, Martin St. Louis and Joe Sakic are the others);
- He'll be the first player since the inception of the Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy to win the Hart, Pearson, Art Ross and Richard; and
- He'll be just the fifth player and first since Mario Lemieux in 1996 to win the Hart, Pearson and Art Ross and lead the league in goals (Phil Esposito, Guy Lafleur and Wayne Gretzky are the others).
- The Caps will be the first team with a pair of Calder winners in a three years span since Calgary did so between 1988 and 1990 (Joe Nieuwendyk and Sergei Makarov);
- He'll be the first Swede to win the Calder since Daniel Alfredsson (1996); and
- He'll be the second Cap to win the award (Alex Ovechkin, 2006... duh).
- He'll be the second Caps coach to win the award (Bryan Murray,1984);
- He'll be the first midseason hire to win the award since Bill Barber (Philadelphia, 2001).
- I'll friggin' cry.