The Hobey Baker committee announced the three finalists for the Hobey Baker Award today, and all three candidates play in Boston.
They are: Matt Gilroy of Boston University, Colin Wilson of BU, and Brad Thiessen of Northeastern.
Wilson and Gilroy are pretty obvious choices. They're dominating players on a dominating team. I'm not as sold on Thiessen. He's brought Northeastern's program a long way, but Northeastern never really seemed to pick up that marquee win, be it winning the Hockey East regular season, the Beapot, the Hockey East playoffs, or in the NCAA tournament.
It's also a litlte odd that nobody from the West made the top three, though there were no great candidates this time around. I'm a little surprised Jacques Lamoureux didn't make the cut, but I guess I can understand why from a hockey perspective.
The big issue now is whether or not Wilson and Gilroy will split enough votes to allow Thiessen to sneak in and win the award. I highly doubt that will happen though, especially since Thiessen isn't likely to pick up a lot of first place votes from the "local vote" seeing as he plays in the same town as the other two guys.