Kevin Dupont

Forget the drum roll and the sealed envelope and the three-piece band standing at the ready to blare out a snappy rendition of the ''Brass Bonanza'',  the long-forgotten fight song of the Hartford Whalers.

Easy, Hartford fans, there is no real tie here to the Whale. I just learned to love that number, and I am still trying to figure out how to make it my cellphone's ringtone. I am convinced my 12-year-old knows how, but he's holding out on me, and intends to use it as leverage, forcing me to buy him another electron gizmo that I'll never know how to work and costs me at least $29 a month in user fees.

Anyway, back to the moment at hand — Thursday night's announcement of the NHL 2008-'09 award winners, and specifically the Hart Trophy for the league's most valuable player.

And therein lies the lack of suspense. If Alexander Ovechkin isn't the winner, then there is something rotten in the Original 30.

Hart Trophy (MVP)
Finalists: Pavel Datsyuk, Detroit; Evgeni Malkin, Pittsburgh; Alex Ovechkin, Washington
A.O. led the league again in goals (56), his second straight Rocket Richard Trophy, and Washington's superstar Russian left winger now has 219 goals in four NHL seasons. Impressive, and I swear he's just heating up, and I still think he can take a run at Wayne Gretzky's record 894 career goals. Sure, he would have to keep up this pace for another dozen years,
but he does have age (23) on his side. I'd give him a better chance if, like the Great One, he had the likes of Jari Kurri and Glenn Anderson on the Caps roster for a few years, but that kind of uber talent is almost impossible to keep together under the salary cap system.

Keep in mind the MVP doesn't necessarily go to the league's best player — Ovechkin is that, too — but instead to the player who is most valuable to his team. Thus the voting standard to apply is this: where would Team 'X' be without Player 'X'. The Caps without Ovechkin? Well,
take away 56 goals and enough energy to power the Lower 48, and they were probably fighting for spots 10-12 in the Eastern Conference rather than finishing second.

Video   Secret to Malkin's magic? May 30: Penguins star talks about how over the years he has become more adapted to living in the United States. NBC Sports

Runner-up: It has to be Ovechkin's rival and countryman, Evgeni Malkin, another superstar, and this year's top overall point-getter (35-78—113), three points ahead of Ovechkin. The Penguins came alive this season after they dumped coach Michel Therrien, but Malkin performed well from start to finish in Pittsburgh. Ovechkin looks capable of winning the Hart for well into the next decade, and Malkin, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, likely will be his stiffest competition.

Honorable mention: Steve Mason. The rookie Blue Jackets goalie led the shotblocking brotherhood with 10 shutouts, on a team that never before qualified for the playoffs. Now, like the rest of the pack, they are 16 wins shy of a championship. The 69th pick in the 2006 draft, Mason won't turn 21 until May 29. Could he log 100 shutouts prior to his 30th birthday?

Norris Trophy (Defenseman)
Finalists: Zdeno Chara, Boston; Mike Green, Washington; Nicklas Lidstrom, Detroit
The award for top defenseman isn't nearly the lock that the MVP is this year, and I don't think my choice will run with the popular vote.

Fourth-year Caps defender Mike Green is the likely winner, based on the chatter among my Professional Hockey Writers' Association cognoscenti.

However, I have to go with Boston blueliner Zdeno Chara, whose play this year has equaled in size the Mount Kilimanjaro he scaled last summer.

Chara is a beast, 6-feet-9 and 255 pounds, and his size and strength are really only part of the package. If he wants to dominate someone physically, he can do that, with the ease of flipping a car's ignition.

However, this year, in helping the Bruins capture the Eastern Conference title in the regular season, he dominated the defensive end like no other defender in the league.

Video   Chara big factor in Bruins' turnaround March 8: He almost pursued basketball, but lucky for the Bruins, 6-foot-9 Zdeno Chara turned to hockey. NBC Sports

By my eye, that's what separates Chara from Green. The trophy is about defense, first and foremost, and I can't think of a blueliner who has taken care of his end better than Chara this year. Green scored 30 goals, playing on a very dynamic, offense-first Washington team.   Chara, meanwhile, scored 19 goals and 50 points, focusing first and foremost on defense, and doing it on a team that did the same.

Green looks as if he could dominate this category in the next decade that way Detroit's  Nicklas Lidstrom carried it this decade. But it's Chara's turn now.

Honorable mention: Lidstrom. He remains slick, productive and classy at 39. The scary part is, he has at least another eight years to go if he's on the Chris Chelios play-in-perpetuity plan.

Vezina Trophy (Goalie)
Finalists: Niklas Backstrom, Wild; Steve Mason, Blue Jackets; Tim Thomas, Boston
A good number of worthy candidates here, including Mason, and it really comes down to splitting hairs in three statistical categories — wins, goals against average and save percentage.

And the winner is ... Tim ''Tank'' Thomas. It took him the better part of a decade and a few tours in Europe to prove he was NHL-worthy. Now he's among the game's elite stoppers, and next year will begin working under a new deal that will pay him $20 million over the next four seasons — pretty good for a guy who just turned 35.

Thomas came up a little light in victories (36), but he carried the goals-against category with a stingy 2.10 and he also led in save percentage with .933. Had the Bruins not repeatedly tried to make Manny Fernandez a co-shareholder in the Boston net, the bet here is that he easily would have pushed Calgary's Miikka Kiprusoff, once his rival when they played Finland, for the most wins (45) this season.

Thomas will earn more next year ($6 million) than he made total the last four seasons in Boston.

Runner-up: San Jose's Evgeni Nabokov with 41 wins, even if he didn't finish in the top five for GAA or save percentage. It was his second straight year to top 40 wins.

Honorable mention: Kiprusoff. He also didn't land in the top five for GAA or save percentage, but he set a career high for wins and he has now broken the 40-goal plateau three of the past four seasons.

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