One of the best of all-time? Absolutely. Player of the year? No. Erin Brown and Ian Kennedy debate Hilary Knight becoming the first ever IIHF Player of the Year.
One of the best of all-time? Absolutely. Player of the year? No. Erin Brown and Ian Kennedy debate Hilary Knight becoming the first ever IIHF Player of the Year.
Hilary Knight was named the inaugural IIHF's women's Player of the Year for 2023. It was a move that was met by near consensus confusion among women's hockey media online. Not for the greatness that is Hilary Knight's storied career, not for the fact she's not still one of the best in the World, not for the fact that she isn't an immediate Hall of Famer, but for the fact that this season, there were many players who had better campaigns.
The Hockey News' Erin Brown and Ian Kennedy debate the vote, and the candidates who had better seasons.
Ian Kennedy : The IIHF handed out their first women’s Player of the Year award this week, with the honor going to American captain Hilary Knight. Hilary Knight is one of the best to ever play the game, she is a first ballot Hall of Famer, but…she was clearly not the player of the year.
This award was meant to showcase the best player in the world each year, but giving Knight the inaugural award is a recognition of her career, not the season she had. It also shows how little exposure media and the IIHF themselves have to watching women’s hockey throughout the year, and throughout the World Championship for that matter. All those in attendance at the World’s saw Hilary Knight score a hat trick in the gold medal game, becoming the first player in history to surpass 100 career points at Worlds. All those in attendance also saw the evident shift in which players were dominating possession and driving play. Knight wasn’t voted an IIHF All-Star at the only tournament she played in in 2023, nor was she even the best player in the eyes of USA Hockey.
It’s hard to say all of this without sounding demeaning to one of the greatest players to ever lace them up. Hilary Knight is an IIHF Hall of Fame and Hockey Hall of Fame lock, she’s been an inspiration to women across the globe, and her career dominance cannot be questioned…but she was not the player of the year at any level. Erin, we both voted on this award, we were both in attendance at Worlds, we both watched the PWHPA, NCAA, and PHF this year, and we were both baffled by this result.
Erin, please, you’re an intelligent person, explain this to me? What happened?
Erin Brown: Let me put on my professor hat for this. One thing which strikes me about poll or ballot results involving the women’s game this year — not just this one — is how they’ve reflected name recognition over performance. I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way — everyone who has been listed is beyond worthy. There have been no questionable options. But I go back to the NHLPA player poll from March in which players named the women’s player they’d like most to play with. Marie-Philip Poulin won (27.9 percent), followed by Knight (20.5), Hayley Wickenheiser (14.7) and Amanda Kessel (7.2). I think The Ice Garden’s Angelica Rodriguez said it the absolute best in a social media post directed at NHL players: “I need y’all to learn other names.”
I think we saw this in the all-tournament team voting in Brampton, too. Poulin had a good tournament, but not a great one as she finished 19th in scoring (4-4–8, 7 GP). Captain Clutch didn’t even have a game-winner. But how does Poulin even garner consideration, let alone make the team? It’s Poulin’s Hall-of-Fame career and media visibility.
I think that’s what pushed Knight into the lead on this one, too. She not only came up huge in the biggest game of the year, but she’s all over media away from the ice. She’s been a face of USA Hockey spanning three decades; an analysis for ESPN; and has numerous product endorsements filling social feeds. Very few other women’s players can match her level of worldwide recognition. If there were ever a tie in on-ice performance, the media backing is going to make a big difference. There are people who may not be able to detail Knight’s on-ice accomplishments, but they know who she is and that matters way more than people realize.
But you rightfully pointed out Knight wasn’t even the top player in the United States. Care to remind us who that was?
Ian Kennedy: That honor went to Caroline Harvey, who won a national title with Wisconsin, led the IIHF World Championships in scoring as a blueliner, was named the World Championship’s top defender and voted an All-Star. She was then named USA Hockey’s Player of the Year…USA’s best player in the world. If an American was to win this award, Caroline Harvey was the player by a landslide.
Erin Brown: Agreed. The dual championships is what made the difference for me. And the 20-year-old wasn’t just along for the ride in either — Harvey scored the OT winner vs. Minnesota which sent Wisconsin to the title game, then had a tying goal for the United States to spark the four-goal third period vs. Canada in the gold-medal game.
Ian Kennedy: Absolutely. Harvey’s team impact was as notable as her individual.
One item that can’t be overlooked, and will be contentious in this discussion is the fact that one of the principle eligibility factors for this award was that players must be competing in a formal domestic league, which the PWHPA acknowledges they were not. In a conversation I had with an IIHF representative on the matter, they admitted that the IIHF was “admittedly bending interpretations a bit to fit our agenda” to include Knight and Poulin. The PWHPA’s structure was more “league-like” this year than ever, so to move on from that criterion, which was broken to include two legendary players, let’s look at Knight’s domestic performance on the Dream Gap Tour. There, Knight finished 23rd in tour scoring, third on Team Sonnet. Again, far from a Player of the Year performance recording 10 points in 18 games.
Erin Brown: I believe the PWHPA had the structure to be considered a league. The only thing that separated the PWHPA from all the other professional organizations is it technically played all road games. To me that wasn’t a detracting factor. But in my voting, yes, Knight finishing outside of the Top 20 in PWHPA scoring kept her from the top spot on my ballot. Poulin won the PWHPA scoring title (12-15–27, 20GP) and a Secret Cup, but her World Championship performance kept her from rising on my list.
So we agree on Harvey and Knight, but who would have been your choices had we voted on a Top 5?
Ian Kennedy: What Nela Lopusanova did for women’s hockey this year was incredible. Her skill and highlight reel goals lifted the U-18 tournament to a prominence it has never seen. Lopusanova played a combined 36 games between the U-18 tournament, European Youth Olympics, Slovakia’s women’s league, and Slovakia’s top men’s U-16 league, and she scored 67 goals and 129 points in that span. She’d be my second choice, followed by, and I can’t decide here, either Emma Soderberg or Sarah Fillier. Soderberg was the Swedish Player of the Year and a national finalist for NCAA goalie of the Year, along with a tournament All-Star at the World Championship. Fillier was a force for Princeton in the NCAA and was also named to the All-Star team and tournament MVP of the Worlds. They’d finish third and fourth in my voting, followed by a battle between Jenni Hiirikoski and Poulin to round out my top five. Unbelievably, that places Knight as the seventh candidate on my list. I don’t claim to know everything, but I did watch every World Championship game, and every Dream Gap Tour weekend this year. Last word to you, Erin. Who finishes where on your expanded ballot?
Erin Brown: I honestly don’t know how I would order the following players. I think Soderberg makes my Top 5 in part for her 12 shutouts with Minnesota-Duluth and pushing Canada to the brink at women’s Worlds. Hiirikoski, too, for a workhorse year with Luleå, including a championship and leading Finland back to Group A — and can we take a moment to appreciate she did this just weeks after suffering a skate to the neck? Wow. Lopusanova makes it on her display of skill and guts to pull off several tricky moves during international competition. And although I couldn’t convince myself to put her atop my list, Knight is on it. She still finished third in World Championship scoring with 12 points, led in goals (8) and had two game-winners, including one for gold in her debut as Team USA’s captain. Not shabby.