2016 End of Season Awards

The Red Stars announce their team awards:

MVP: Christen Press
Defender of the Year: Julie Johnston
Rookie of the Year: Casey Short
Unsung Hero: Vanessa DiBernardo
Iron Woman of Character: Alyssa Naeher

http://chicagoredstars.com/chicago-red-stars-announce-winners-of-2016-team-awards/

 

MVP goes to Golden Boot.... again. Despite this being the weakest Golden Boot in NWSL's history so far.

 

I honestly can't remember who I voted for. I think I ended up going homer and voted K with Williams getting 2nd? Still a sham McDonald wasn't nominated.

For the defender, I also think Barnes was probably 3rd on list that should have won this year

 

2016 #NWSL Best XI:

GK: Harris

D: Barnes, Gililand, Menges, Sauerbrunn

M: Heath, Long

F: McDonald, Ohai, Press, Williams

— Dan Lauletta (@TheDanLauletta) October 7, 2016

GK default, all four defenders were in the 5 defender nominees, and all six of the M/Fs were the five MVP nominees... save McDonald.

I hope the second XI get announced soon.
=EDIT=
Both lists:

#NWSL Best XI is a solid 4-2-4 formation (heh). Second XI, if it were a team, looks like a 4-4-2. pic.twitter.com/iroirQ7baH

— Jeff Kassouf (@JeffKassouf) October 7, 2016

I'm upset that neither Nadim nor Rocky got recognized...

 

Kind of surprised at Dunn instead of Nadim

 

Seven new players in this season's #NWSL Best XI. Congrats to all of the players selected! https://t.co/Uag2DVWlBC pic.twitter.com/8uyN3ku0mF

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) October 7, 2016

So does playing in red help u win stuff?

 

USWNT/name-recognition bias, I'm sure.

 

That front 4 may be my exact nominations. I kind of forgot if I voted Press or someone else.

 

What did Chicago win? Why do they deserve so many individual awards and call ups.

 

I know they were mine!

- - - - -

Third in the league isn't at all shabby; not to mention they led the league for a while. Still had 1.00 GAA as a team, which is also a fair accomplishment - that's why many of their recognitions are to defensive players.

 

I doggedly voted for 3 forwards and 3 midfielder...Im a dinosaur

 

I noticed the imbalance, too.

 

I didn't see a 2016 Stats/Trivia thread like we had for 2015, so I figured I'd post this here as it's relevant to the MVP award. As some here might remember, I'm a big LA Kings fan and lately their TV announcers have been talking a lot about goals as a percentage of the team's goals. Why? Well one of the King's players is #2 in the league in goals, but he leads the league in percentage of team's goals. So they think that should give him an edge for MVP (although being homers they are ignoring that the #1 goal scorer is also #2 in assists...). Anyway, I figured it would be interesting to analyze this "statistic" on last season's NWSL stats and see who was really the most valuable for their team since the forums are pretty quiet lately. Stats were taken from Fox Sports, since the NWSL seems to have removed all the stats files from their box account (so hopefully they're correct).

So here's the top 10 individual goals as % of team's goals:

Rank	Player	Individual Goals	Team Goals	Percentage
1	Shea Groom	8	18	44.444%
2	Kealia Ohai	11	29	37.931%
3	Christen Press	8	24	33.333%
4	Kristen Edmonds	6	20	30.000%
5	Sofia Huerta	7	24	29.167%
6	Lynn Williams	11	40	27.500%
7	Nadia Nadim	9	35	25.714%
8	Jessica McDonald	10	40	25.000%
9	Manon Melis	7	29	24.138%
10	Natasha Dowie	3	14	21.429%

I also decided to look at individual assists as a % of team's assists:

Rank	Player	Individual Assists	Team Assists	Percentage
1	Vanessa DiBernardo	7	16	43.750%
2	Tobin Heath	10	23	43.478%
3	Tiffany McCarty	4	11	36.364%
4	Crystal Dunn	5	16	31.250%
5	Louise Schillgard	2	7	28.571%
6	Leah Galton	4	16	25.000%
6	Taylor Lytle	4	16	25.000%
8	Jessica McDonald	7	29	24.138%
9	Jessica Fishlock	4	19	21.053%
10	Christine Nairn	3	16	18.750%

(Neither Ohai nor Williams made the top 10, but Ohai was slightly better at 17.391% vs William's 17.241%)

And since this came from hockey, I thought why not look at individual points (goals+assists) as a % of team's goals:

Rank	Player	Individual Points	Team Goals	Percentage
1	Kealia Ohai	15	29	51.724%
2	Shea Groom	8	18	44.444%
3	Jessica McDonald	17	40	42.500%
4	Lynn Williams	16	40	40.000%
4	Kristen Edmonds	8	20	40.000%
6	Sofia Huerta	9	24	37.500%
7	Nadia Nadim	12	35	34.286%
8	Christen Press	8	24	33.333%
8	Tiffany McCarty	6	18	33.333%
10	Tobin Heath	11	35	31.429%

So I hope you all found this interesting. The biggest surprise for me was seeing Tiffany McCarty in the top 10 not only for assists but for points too... I guess that shows how poorly FCKC's offense did last season more than anything, though.

The fact that Jess McDonald was the only player in the top 10 in all 3 of these categories (at the same time as her team had the highest number of goals and assists!), was 2nd in goals, 2nd in assists, lead the league in points, and yet she wasn't even a finalist for MVP is just mind-boggling!

 

Team MVP's should be the finalists for league MVP's.

 

Well certainly if it's a good team, but it's pretty understandable why the MVPs of the worst teams wouldn't be nominated.

But yeah if you win your team's MVP, but aren't nominated for league MVP, and then your teammate wins it...

 

Well, yea. It should be a minimum though. You shouldn't be competing for MVP in the league if you don't even win your team MVP. That should preclude you from the vote, full stop.