A brief history of the Thornton Award, a fake trophy for best debut with a new team

It’s summer and nothing’s happening. Let’s make up another fake award.

We did this last summer, when we introduced the Pollock Trophy for a season’s best trade. Prior to that, we’ve also done the Carson Trophy for best sophomore season, as well as the Bourque Trophy for best final season. None of these actually exist, but they should, and that’s enough for our purposes.

For today’s award, we’re going to create the Joe Thornton Award for the best debut with a new team.

A couple of quick rules: Rookie debuts have their own award, so they don’t count – a player has to have previously played for another NHL team before joining a new one. Unlike most awards, we're taking the playoffs into consideration. And finally, a player has to have played at least half the season with his new team, because I don’t feel like figuring out how to rate deadline pickups. Other that that, the field is open – we can be looking at trades, free agent signings, waiver pickups or whatever else.

We’ll cover the cap era, starting with a 2006 recipient. It’s Slow News Summer, let’s argue about an award that doesn’t exist.

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