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Lessee. Flowers are blooming, trees are acquiring leaves, baseball is back and the playoffs are imminent. It must be time to hand out the hardware.

OK, so there's a week left before the end of the season and the actual awards aren't announced for a couple days after that, but it's no fun announcing the winners if you haven't made an idiot of yourself guessing at the winners in advance. And I'm only dealing here with those awards that required voting/thinking. Any award which automatically goes to the guy with the best numbers, goes to the guy with the best numbers and doesn't require discussion. That said, here goes.

Daniel Briere by Tricia McMillan

All-Rookie Team: Yikes. Tough one. Not only were there five absolute standout rookies in the forward ranks, they're all centers. Nuts. I'm just naming three forwards, actual position be damned.

Forward - Daniel Briere, Springfield
Forward - Brendan Morrison, Albany
Forward - Michal Handzus, Worcester
Defense - Brent Sopel, Syracuse
Defense - Mike Gaul, Hershey
Goaltender - John Grahame, Providence

Leaving Marc Savard and John Madden out of this was pretty tough, and leaving out Jean-Sebastien Giguere and Marc Denis wasn't easy either. But Denis started the season rockier than Colorado, Giguere missed half the season with illness and injury, and Grahame had to spend a whole year as a backstop to one sorry bunch of leadfoots. But Grahame survived a full season, played solidly all year and played extremely well despite his teammates towards the end of the year, so we'll give the nod to the guy who had the biggest headache.

Zdeno Chara proved the hype wasn't for height, demonstrating more than a little ability behind the blue line and a willingness to take a beating in the process; but Sopel turned out to be more than solid on both offense and defense. He was just the right amount of chippy for a blueliner and improved as the season went on, unheralded.

Mike Gaul by Kevin Fischer

Here's the herald. Gaul surprised the heck out of everyone except Germany - they watched him post 85 points in 39 games last season. Gaul missed training camp and the first several weeks of the season due to an appendectomy, but still ruled rookie defensemen offensively and was near the top in rookie scoring period. Did the job in his own end too, as the only Bears regular with a plus rating.

Briere, jeez. What is left to say about him? The scooter ran the whole league upside the head this season and proved only the boneheadedness of NHL GMs who can't see past a yardstick.

Morrison is only two inches taller than Briere but didn't have to put up with the size griping; turns out he could handle the heavier pro schedule just fine, coming on incredibly strong at the end of the year and picking up a pair of Rookie of the Month awards.

And Handzus is just plain amazing. I shudder to think what'll happen when he learns English and can actually talk to his teammates - he must've had ESP with some of the passes he's made this year.

Clearly Savard and Madden (and Syracuse's Peter Schaefer, for that matter) belong in this company as well, but someone had to be left out. Numbers, you know.

Rookie of the Year (Dudley 'Red' Garrett Award): Oh yeah. Have to pick one guy for the overall award. No contest, it's Briere all the way. Too bad he didn't finish the season in the AHL to give White and Guolla a run for the scoring title.

All-Star Teams: Goaltenders were tough to pick. Reasoning later.

       First Team        Second Team
Forward   Steve Guolla, Kentucky   Alexei Yegorov, Kentucky
Forward   Daniel Briere, Spring.   Scott Fraser, Hamilton
Forward   Peter White, Phil.       Craig Darby, Philadelphia
Defense   Jamie Heward, Phil.      Geordie Kinnear, Albany
Defense   Mike Gaul, Hershey       Stuart Malgunas, Portland
Goalie    Robb Stauber, Hartford   Richard Shulmistra, Albany

MVP (Les Cunningham Award): Oooh, ouch. Another tough category. The natural place to look is at top scorers, so we'll start there. Peter White and Craig Darby were both top scorers, but cancel each other out. Likewise for Steve Guolla and Alexei Yegorov. It's tough to be the MVP when your linemate has the same numbers, making him just as valuable to the team. Andrew Brunette might have been the man had he stayed in the AHL all season, but he didn't. He's darn close to it anyway. No goaltender has stood out like JF Labbe did last year - Labbe had a good season, as did Norm Maracle, but they didn't take their teams anywhere they weren't likely to have gone without them. The Saint John, Albany and Philadelphia goaltending tandems were all standouts, but they were also tandems.

Jamie Heward by Tricia McMillan

So we wind up with the usual suspect, Daniel Briere. Or do we? Scott Fraser certainly did the job well enough in Hamilton; and how about the defensemen? Without Mike Gaul and Zdeno Chara, Hershey and Kentucky might have finished in the ECHL. How about defensemen period? Can't play the game without 'em, especially the defensemen who actually play defense. So we're going to try something new and different here and nominate Philadelphia's Jamie Heward.

Heward had far more to do with the Phantoms' success than the goaltending or the scoring - he managed to do a lot by way of both as well as playing terrific defense. Briere gets the honorable mention.

Best Goaltender (Aldege 'Baz' Bastien Award): None of these are going to be easy are they? While many goaltenders played well, none of the true number one goalies were standouts and the standouts weren't number one guys.

Petr Franek made a run at this the first half of the season but then Marc Denis got the hang of it and Franek found the bench. Likewise with Peter Sidorkiewicz and Richard Shulmistra. Shulmistra posted the best numbers of any goaltender in the league, but he didn't start the season in the AHL, wasn't deemed Albany's number one man until February and then spent March with a variety of aches and pains.

Tyler Moss by Tricia McMillan

Tyler Moss split chores with Jean-Sebastien Giguere and a cast of thousands (OK, six); and Scott Langkow spent half the season in the NHL. Tom Askey spent half of the season injured. Martin Brochu did both the first half of the season, losing time both to the Capitals and a knee injury. Robb Stauber played more than anyone else in Hartford and did it well, but was officially the second fiddle until Jason Muzzatti was traded at the deadline.

So while it's really not allowed, I'm going to give this award to some seven guys - the entire goaltending corps posted by the Saint John Flames this season. Moss and Giguere were both outstanding when available, and most of the emergency guys - especially Igor Karpenko - were more than capable. And the Flames allowed the fewest goals of any team in league history. Make it a group shot.

Geordie Kinnear by Tricia McMillan

Best Defenseman (Eddie Shore Award): Needed at least one easy one. If Heward's the MVP, then he kinda has to be the best defenseman. Certainly Gaul, Sopel and Chara merit mention, and both Geordie Kinnear and Stuart Malgunas were superb in holding their teams' respective forts. Possibly the best runner-up is a guy you may never have heard of - Saint John's Ryan Bast. Bast was about the only blueliner in Saint John to survive the entire season with body parts intact and still in New Brunswick. He also posted the top plus/minus rating in the AHL even though he never scored (11 points through 69 games) and was quite familiar with the penalty box.

Best Coach (Louis A.R. Pieri Award): Some people may find this one hard, but I don't. Take a bow, Bill Stewart. Based on their original roster, Saint John should have been a good team; they had no business being a great one, particularly when they spent nearly the whole year missing half their lineup to injury and callups and rarely were able to meet the standard 16 skaters. Stewart himself nearly had to suit up on one occasion to get the team to the minimum 14 skaters. They used nearly a dozen goaltenders and a wide assortment of borrowed UHL and ECHL players, but didn't have the services of Marty Murray, JS Giguere, Chris O'Sullivan, etc. for the majority of the season. Every time it appeared they might have a full roster, Calgary raided the roost. And after all that they allowed the fewest goals in AHL history while dominating their division. This is all Stewart's.

Comeback/Dedication to the Game (Fred T. Hunt Award): Back to the toughies. There were no clear comeback stories this season, certainly not like Steve Passmore's tale of woe last year. Mike Gaul survived his training camp appendectomy and that's about it for dramatic injuries. Scott Nichol and Sergei Klimentiev both played for the Amerks long after they should've quit due to injury, and Nichol immediately returned to the team after surgery as an assistant coach, largely due to guilt over not being able to play. Peter Sidorkiewicz played the good soldier all season long, with no real intention of doing anything other than his job and taking all assignments in stride.

Scott Fraser by Tricia McMillan

So maybe this season the comeback will be due to, say, a readjustment of attitude? Hamilton's Scott Fraser had run-ins with two coaches on two different teams, was traded by his NHL club, was exiled to IHL San Antonio and then to Greensboro. Hard to want to stick around the sport after a season like that, but Fraser opted to address the perceived defensive deficiencies in his game and then talked Edmonton into giving him a shot. The result was one of the league's best plus/minus ratings, the Bulldogs' top scorer distinction, and a few callups to the big leagues. We'll give it to Fraser, with a nod to Nichol.

Executive of the Year (Hendry Award): Easy. Look up the word 'proactive' in the dictionary and they've put a picture of Rochester Americans GM Jody Gage in there. The Amerks flat out stank the first half; so Gage got busy and overhauled the whole team. He wheeled and dealed with the IHL to get what he wanted and when it didn't work out he managed to get something else he wanted anyway. Gage found more gems in the ECHL than anyone else this season and figured out how to jump start Martin Biron. A job well done.

Well, that's that. Check back over the next few weeks to find out which players actually received the awards and then yell and scream and argue and all that other stuff that comes with trying to pick winners.

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