St. Louis Blues fans may have cringed with this news.
The NHL announced Wednesday that Wild Captain Jared Spurgeon was nominated as a finalist for the Lady Byng Trophy, along with Winnipeg’s Kyle Connor and Carolina’s Jaccob Slavin. The award is presented, “to the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability“
Spurgeon, who was a finalist for the award last season as well, is the prime example of what the Lady Byng represents.
Spurge is often not a hostile player by an means, he just plays the game the right way. He’s not a big penalty liability by any means only registering jsix penalty minutes in the regular season this year. He’s done a great job of staying out of the box.
In the playoffs, he was assessed four penalty which didn’t help the Wild’s already bad habit of taking penalties at the absolute wrong times. In the ultimate act of frustration, Spurgeon took to playing a bit dirty by laying a nasty cross-check on the ankle of Blue’s forward Pavel Buchnevich in which the NHL’s department of Player Safety fined Jared $5,000 for the infraction.
"It’s something I’m not really proud of,” Spurgeon said “Something I don’t usually do and just got a little frustrated and I’m happy he’s alright. But that’s something I usually don’t do and not the player I am. So I’m not very happy with myself to say the least."
His ownership of the penalty at least shows that Spuge is a class act and he was glad to know that Buchnevich wasn’t injured on the play.
Kyle Connor (@NHLJets), Jaccob Slavin (@Canes) and Jared Spurgeon (@mnwild) are the three finalists for the 2021-22 Lady Byng Memorial Trophy. #NHLAwards#NHLStats: https://t.co/ouv2SEMXzF pic.twitter.com/nASh9xKu2Q
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) May 18, 2022
It’s something he normally doesn’t do. The slash came during the heat of the playoffs and became overwhelming in the Wild’s Game 1 loss. It is understandable to an extent because the players are competing their butts off to win the hardest trophy in sports to win, the Stanley Cup.
Unfortunately for Spurgeon and the Wild, a championship won’t be happening this year.
Even with that said,, it does not rule out Spurgeon still earning some personal hardware.
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