Blues Top Prospect Named Hobey Baker Award Finalist
St. Louis Blues prospect Jimmy Snuggerud, after being selected with the 23rd pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, was named a finalist for the 2025 Hobey Baker Award on Wednesday. (Eric Bolte-Imagn Images)The winner will be announced April 11 live on NHL Network as part of NCAA Frozen Four festivities.
Snuggerud has already cemented his place in Golden Gophers' history as the sixth player to earn three postseason conference awards and now is a finalist for the highest honor in college hockey for the first time in his career.
This season, the junior captain earned All-Big Ten Conference First-Team honors for the second-straight season following second-team recognition as a freshman. He currently leads the Gophers offense with 49 points (22 goals, 27 assists), ranking second in the Big Ten and fifth nationally and is just one shy of his career-high freshman total of 50.
A native of Chaska, Minn., Snuggerud's 22 goals are a career high, with a conference-leading 19 coming in league play during the 2024-25 season.
Snuggerud has recorded points in 29 of 39 games, including 16 multi-point performances, earning three Big Ten First Star of the Week honors this season.
Over his career, he has collected seven Big Ten weekly honors, including a record six First Star selections.
Snuggerud put together a dominant month, his best this season, in January, where he scored 11 goals and assisted on six others, and seven multi-point games, which landed him HCA National Player of the Month recognition. He registered a six-game goal streak in January to set a new career high. He also joined elite company as only the third player in program history to score 20 or more goals in three consecutive seasons, a feat last accomplished over 70 years ago by Hall of Famers John Mayasich and Dick Dougherty.
Four players representing Minnesota have won the Hobey Baker in program history, including Neal Broten (1981), Robb Stauber (1988), Brian Bonin (1996), and Jordan Leopold (2002).
Broten was the first-ever recipient of the award when he scored 71 points (17 goals, 54 assists) in 36 games as a sophomore during the 1980-81 campaign. Most recently, Logan Cooley and Matthew Knies were selected as Hobey Hat Trick Finalists in 2022-23 after Ben Meyers and Jack LaFontaine were top 10 finalists in 2021-22 and 2020-21, respectively.
Snuggerud and Minnesota (25-10-4) are awaiting where and what regional they will play in with hopes of landing at Enterprise Center in St. Louis for the Frozen Four on April 10-12 with the Blues planning on him turn pro after the end of the forward's junior season.
Defenseman Scott Perunovich (2020) was the last Blues prospect to win the prestigious award.