We nominated, you voted, and the results are in. We’re down to the final two categories for the 2013 Jets Nation Year End Awards where we reveal your reader picks with our writers’ perspectives. We might have tricked you into thinking we were done handing out hardware last week (by lying to you – what a cunning ruse), but how silly do you feel now?! We still need to crown our Most Valuable Player and name our summer whipping boy! In this article – the missing link! Jets’ Most Valuable Player!

Can I just re-submit what I wrote about him as best forward? This guy was a beast, and carried the team on his back. 

 

But, beyond his impressive offensive numbers and dynamic all-around play, lay his true MVP’ness. I can’t re-iterate enough how impressed I was with his post-season comments. While media and fans generally predicted the Jets to finish in the bottom on the Conference – and certainly not to be in the playoff race until the 2nd intermission of Game 48 – Ladd apparently thought otherwise. In a distraught tone, Ladd spoke of how the season was a failure. This guy expects to win, and he damn near dragged a Jets team sorely lacking quality NHL forwards into the playoffs well before pundits thought the feat possible. For this, and everything else he did, Andrew Ladd is my pick as Jets MVP.

Well, it’s anti-climactic now, but Andrew Ladd was my vote too. After seeing the paragraphs above, I tried to come up with another candidate just to be different. Sadly (for you and me), there just isn’t another case to be made. Bogosian played tough minutes! So did Ladd. Wheeler scored a lot! Not as much as Ladd. Evander Kane is black and proud! Well, he’s got Ladd there, but I think I lost track of my point.

The point is, then, that Ladd is the no-brainer MVP of this team. I worry about his shooting % (14.9 compared to a career 11.4) and his on-ice shooting % (11.4 – the highest of his career by more than 1/10th). Still, his shooting % was high in his first year with Atlanta and he scored 29 goals, it dropped last year and he scored 28 (with 70 more shots), and he was on pace for 31 this year with an elevated % again. So perhaps my hand wringing is for naught. Ladd seems to find a way.

With a whopping (but maybe not as whopping as I expected) 86%, Andrew Ladd is your MVP! (Imagine the crowd going wild right here)

‘The Fans’ received a single vote. That poor Jets National. She/He had a really rough season. In order to cheer you up, random anonymous fan, I went to the wikihow page on cheering people up (obviously, because I struggle with psychopathy). It recommended self-depricating humour might lighten the mood. Luckily it gave me some examples of that. Here are the best three:

#2 works better verbally, which is a bit mean to our sign-language enabled friend Jack Ribchimpski. Still, I hope I’ve made you feel better, single underappreciated Jets fan.

Don’t forget to play StreakCred the new playoff pool game from the Nation Network. You can win a trip for 2 to Oktoberfest in Germany among the awesome prizes up for grabs. Only $20 and a portion of the proceeds go to Charity. Sign up here.