The NHL's Most Underrated Player - Cam Ward

When you win the Conn Smythe Trophy in your second season, two things can happen. If you play in a hockey market the pressure goes up and with success, so does your reputation. If you play in the American south no matter how successful you are you can become irrelevant.

Right now, people in the Carolinas want to know if anyone is going to catch NASCAR's Kyle Busch or whether North Carolina can make it to the Final Four. They don't want to read this hockey blog, even though it's about the best player on a good team playing right in their backyard. Gary Bettman has subjected us to this kind of nonsense for the last 15 years. Players like Cam Ward, Ilya Kovalchuk and Shane Doan suffer from lack of exposure simply because of where they play.

Aside from winning the Conn Smythe, Ward has the best age to wins ratio of any goalie in the NHL. Ward will be the next great goalie to come from this sport and yet nobody outside of the hockey industry itself, has any idea. Everyone knows he's good but nobody is comparing him to Patrick Roy....yet.