Friday, April 11, 2008

Kevin Porter Wins the Hobey Baker

A night after a very disappointing end to his season, Kevin Porter became the second Wolverine in history to win the Hobey Baker, beating out Nate Gerbe and Ryan Jones in the process. There is an eery parallel with Brendan Morrison, who won his Hobey a night after the heavily-favored Wolverines were eliminated in the semifinals by Boston University.

Congrats to Kevin. This is a major accomplishment and even if this season didn't end the way we all wanted it to, he has nothing to be ashamed of. Out of all the greats that have come through this program, just he and Morrison have been honored this way, and that's lofty company to be in.

I met Porter and Jones at the Hobey Hat Trick autograph session (Gerbe was excluded because BC is still playing) and both of them seemed like really good kids. Porter was very friendly to everyone and had a smile on his face most of the time I was there even though he had to be hurting. Jones has cut his hair and looks completely different. He was a really nice guy as well.

Porter was also named a West First Team All-American. Kolarik was on the West's Second Team.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats to Kevin, his teammates, and his family. The honor of receiving the Hobey was well deserved. The Hobey Foundation got it right this year. From Day 1, the seniors knew what it would take to get the job done: A total transformation of the previous two seasons.

I can't say how impressed I've been with this team. Yeah, losing Thursday kind of sucked, but it didn't devastate me. I was just discouraged that this year had to finally reach it's end. With Friday morning came the realization that Porter and Kolarik are gone, which absolutely set up the rest of my day as a disappointment.

Regardless of the results in our final game, or how it played out, this team and us fans have nothing to hang our heads about. They fell short of one final goal, but damn did they give us a ride getting there. Nothing but good memories of this year.

With that, I've put together a youtube clip. The quality there sucks, but I'd be happy to accommodate anyone who might want the original mpeg2 copy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1YrUZEEPm8

Unknown said...

It's a great accomplishment...but we all know that we would rather have had Porter be snubbed and UM win the championship. And even without knowing him, I'm positive Porter feels the same way.