This year’s nominees from the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy were announced Friday, with the Kings’ Viktor Arvidsson and the Ducks’ Urho Vaakanainen joining the field of 32 honorees, one from each NHL franchise.
The award recognizes “the National Hockey League player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to hockey” and honors Masterton, the only player to die as a direct result of an injury sustained during NHL competition. Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Kris Letang, who returned to competition after a stroke for the second time in his career, was last year’s winner.
Both Arvidsson, a Swedish winger in his third campaign with the Kings, and Vaakanainen, a Finnish rearguard whom the Ducks acquired near the 2022 trade deadline, have battled through multiple injuries and surgeries in recent seasons.
Arvidsson, whose up-and-down health was a significant reason the Nashville Predators traded their seventh-leading goal-scorer in franchise history to the Kings in 2021, underwent two major back surgeries between spring of 2022 and fall of 2023. Just 17 seconds into his fourth game back from his most recent rehabilitation, he sustained an unrelated lower-body injury that took him off the ice and put him back in the trainer’s room. The Kings have won nine of 12 games with Arvidsson in the lineup and all six games in which he’s registered at least one point.
“It’s been a battle, it’s been 12 months of rehab from different injuries and stuff like that,” Arvidsson told Kings blogger Zach Dooley. “A lot of early mornings, going to work every day, just trying to be positive and trying to kind of bring energy to the team and certain things. It’s a great honor [to be nominated] and I’m really happy that people thought about me.”
At 25, five years Arvidsson’s junior, Vaakanainen has also experienced more than his share of injury woes already at the NHL level. The former Boston first-rounder sustained a concussion while playing with the Bruins in just his second NHL game and then another in 2022. A hard spill into the boards cost him over a month of last season, a campaign that was ultimately cut short after 23 games when Vaakainen required hip surgery.
Though he’s had to play while recuperating and rehabilitating, he’s been available to the Ducks in every game this year and he has dressed in 65 of them. He’s formed a formidable shutdown pairing with veteran Radko Gudas, who was set to return Friday from an injury of his own, when they’ve been deployed together.
“Staying healthy and getting to play is a big thing,” Vaakanainen told Derek Lee of The Hockey News. “Just getting the reps and staying consistent. I feel like I’m getting better every day,”
