The NHL regular season concludes on Monday and the playoff races in both the East and West won’t be determined until the final weekend of play. Only the final two playoff spots are open in the East, whereas the West has spots 5 to 8 available (although at this point only one new team in each conference can actually make it in). Madness. Last year’s Stanley Cup Champions are holding on desperately to the final playoff spot. Their reward: playing the President’s Trophy winners and their yearly opponent – the Canucks. Interesting indeed.

There is also a heated race for the major trophies, specifically the Hart Trophy awarded to the league’s most valuable player. Corey Perry is making a late charge by essentially scoring on a nightly basis. Earlier this week he scored a hat-trick to become the first (and likely only) player to hit 50 goals this season. He’s now only five points behind Daniel Sedin for the league lead in points, while scoring nine more goals, more short-handed goals and more overtime goals. Perry plays more minutes each night and carried the team during Ryan Getzlaf’s absence. Of course, Sedin is the best player on the best team in the league. It's being debated.

There’s enough talk about the real NHL Awards that you can find detailed arguments anywhere on the net. But what I really want to do is introduce the First Annual Alternative NHL Awards. I know the season isn't over yet, but these races are.

The first month of the NHL season is complete and the Leafs have looked equally surprising and predictable. To everyone’s surprise, the Leafs won the first four games of the season, while recently their ability to score has seemingly disappeared, not so surprising.

It’s a long season and it’s always important to remind yourself of both the good and the bad to ensure you don’t get too high or too low.

For example, after the Leafs started the season 4-0, I was very seriously considering betting on them to win the Northeast Division. The odds were good and the Leafs were rolling. Then I told myself they squeaked by against Montreal, held on against an undermanned Pittsburgh team, outplayed a badly undermanned New York team, yet only won on a power-play in overtime, and throttled Ottawa because the Senators are garbage. The reasonable voice inside my head told me the Leafs finished 29th only a year ago and I already predicted they would have to fight all year just to make the playoffs (which they’ll make in case you’re wondering). The rational fan won. The passionate fan was too busy getting drunk and yelling ‘Go Leafs Go!’ to provide a cogent argument.

Let’s take a brief look at the first month of the season and see what’s going right for the Leafs and, unfortunately, what’s going wrong.