The NHL Awards came to the Palms in Las Vegas for the first time last year, and there were a few kinks to work out. This applied to the press area too, where reporters had to abandon our laptops in the media workroom to do interviews in another room (so spoiled are we collectively that a trip to Vegas is no longer enough…). It was a clunky process that was rectified today.

The downside of having two interview podiums at the front of the media workroom meant that the all the televisions carrying the actual Awards ceremony were muted whenever a player was giving an interview. So we didn’t actually hear half the show (though I was told that Jay Mohr did a mean Christopher Walken interview).

Thank God no one was being interviewed when the hands-down, best laugh-out-loud video segment of the show (that I could hear) was on TV:

For the record, I liked Bobby Ryan’s painting better.

The rest of the show was a mostly Duck-less affair, although Corey Perry (8th) and Bobby Ryan (tied for 12th with Ilya Kovalchuk) each garnered a handful of votes in the voting for all-star right wings. Scott Niedermayer picked up two votes in the all-star defenseman category.