Broadcasters’ failure to vote on Jack Adams is embarrassing

A lot of people are taking issue with how the voting proceeded for one of the NHL’s top individual honors.

On Wednesday, it was announced that Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper won the 2025-26 Jack Adams Award as coach of the year. While there’s no question that Cooper is an excellent candidate for the award, it seemed as if Lindy Ruff of the Buffalo Sabres or Dan Muse of the Pittsburgh Penguins were even more deserving this season.

The Jack Adams is voted on by the NHL Broadcasters Association. According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, only 59 of the 99 qualified voters actually cast their ballots, leading many to wonder how the results would’ve panned out had everyone actually voted.

On Friday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton suggested that the league may need to change who gets to vote for which awards.

Tyler Yaremchuk: It’s borderline unacceptable, and we’ve talked about it on the NHL…we’d like to see the league change who gets to vote on what awards. If 40 of your 99 members aren’t going to cast their ballot, you should probably lose your right to vote on that award.

Carter Hutton: I agree. I think it’s something that there’s like a privilege in being able to be the guy that controls that vote, because think how much that award meant to Jon Cooper in winning that award, like it meant everything to him, right? That’s an important factor for coaches, for everyone, like the legacy of it. Even playing for a coach that wins an award…I remember being part of teams where guys won awards. I think that’s something that you all wear as a badge of honor, right? It is an individual award, but it’s always a team award. I think the fact that, like, you have the ability to vote for it, we’re not asking you to do anything that’s crazy, it’s literally fill out a ballot. I’m sure it’s a simple process to have 40 of them not do it.

You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…