Nominees
Eric Boulton - surprisingly great year with a Fight of the Year candidate vs. Orr and great fights with Brashear, Vandermeer, Konopka, Thornton, etc
Riley Cote - last year's winner had another exciting year with few wins but lots of punches. Fight of the year candidate vs. Godard as well as awesome bouts with Shelley, MacIntyre, Boulton, Rechlicz, and Belak.
Eric Godard - Had the epic fight with Cote, the four-fight classic series with
Colton Orr and a huge beatdown of
Steve MacIntyre.
Colton Orr - The incredible series with Godard, the aforementioned punch-in-the-face classic with Boulton, and great fights with MacIntyre, Koci, Brashear and even old-man-Owen-Nolan.
Jody Shelley - Had an exciting year enforcing for the Sharks, going toe-to-toe with Brashear, Parros, Cote, McGrattan and Ivanans in excellent fights. Bonus points for leaving plenty of blood on the ice (his own and opponents)
My Pick
Again the "Most Exciting Enforcer" tag has to wait another year before we can give it to
Rick Rypien (Can the guy ever stay healthy?). Also a shout out to
Chris Neil who has been a warrior but a pretty boring fighter of late. This year he turned in a hell of a season fight-wise including many high-quality fights. Another honorable mention to
Donald Brashear who had more "great" fights than I think he's had in the last 10 years combined. Great job letting loose and throwing the punches.
As for my vote of an actual contestant, I'm going to go with
Colton Orr as his fights were just consistently very good. I also like that he has that immense power (which we only got to really see this year in the Rupp TKO but it still makes the fights more exciting). Really can't go wrong with any choice here.
Previous Winners
2003-04:
Darcy Hordichuk
2005-06:
Brian McGrattan
2006-07:
Derek Boogaard (stole it from
Josh Gratton IMO)
2007-08:
Riley Cote