NHL Awards 2013: Pittsburgh Penguins Ray Shero named General manager of the Year
By Josh Hill
The Pittsburgh Penguins didn’t make it to the Stanley Cup after putting together a team that looked like they were more than capable of doing so, but that hasn’t stopped the NHL from awarding general manager Ray Shero the best executive in all of hockey. Shero won the General Manager of the Year award on Friday night when the NHL started handing out hardware to the best of the best from the shortened 2013 season.
Shero is being credited as the man behind deals to land Jarmoe Iginla from the Calgary Flames as well as Branden Morrow from the Dallas Stars among others.
The team may have failed in the postseason but that had little to do with Shero ,as he did all he could to put as much talent on the Pens as he possibly could. He couldn’t help the fact that Dan Bylsma failed to pull the team together in the Eastern Conference Finals nor could he bare responsibility for the way Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin acted in that series either.
But what he did do was put together a team that probably should have made it to the Stanley Cup and all the shortcomings the team endured in the postseason were not due to a lack of talent, rather a lack of leadership.
Shero got blasted by some for trying to put together a team that was too good, and that may have actually turned out out to be truth. His efforts were compared to the 208 New York Yankees, but there’s not shame in trying to load your team with talent. Obviously the NHL has no problem with it as they’ve awarded Shero the best general manager in all of hockey for doing exactly that.