Malkin vs Ovie

I left this in response to on another Penguins blog i Read and thought i would share my thoughts with my readers. She was saying Malkin should be the MVP over Ovie which i agree with. She also put up a lot of stats that showed Malkin had a much better year than AO, but the one stat and argument i couldnt agree with was shooting percentage Malkin shoot 12.1% and had 35 goals AO shot 10% took 560 shots to lead the league and had 56 goals. Her argument was if Malkin was a puck hog and took 500 shots he would have had 70 goals. But as i state below it is hard to get shots in the NHL.


I agree Malkin is the better player and deserves the award much more than AO, but your argument about there shooting percentage is ridiculous. It's not easy to get that many shots and would love to have a guy on the Penguins team that could take 500 shots and have a shooting percentage of 10. That being said Malkin is a much more rounded player that actually plays defense. People will make the argument that AO is not one dimensional because he is in the top ten in hits in the league, but if you watch him play he takes himself out of position to take cheap shot runs at people which is a big reason a guy with 56 goals can have such a low + - rating. Another reason Malkin is being overlooked for this award is because he lives in Crosby's shadow, maybe not here in Pittsburgh but in every other city he is. If you went to any city other than Pittsburgh and asked who the team MVP is almost everyone would say Crosby. And if Crosby played the entire season the way he has over the last month that would be the correct answer.