Tortorella coach of year; St. Louis earns 3 awards

TORONTO – The Tampa Bay Lightning have a few more awards to go with their Stanley Cup.

Tampa Bay coach John Tortorella won coach of the year, Brad Richards was saluted as most gentlemanly player, and Martin St. Louis took home the biggest prize as league MVP at the NHL awards banquet Thursday night.

St. Louis also was presented with the Art Ross Trophy as scoring champion and, earlier in the day, he won the Lester B. Pearson Award as most outstanding player as selected by his peers.

“It’s going to be a tough year to top,” said St. Louis, who became the first player since Wayne Gretzky in 1987 to win the Hart, Ross and Stanley Cup in the same season.

He’s only the eighth player in NHL history to complete the triple.

Tampa Bay beat Calgary in Game 7 of the finals on Monday.

“I don’t know if it means I’m the best player in the NHL,” St. Louis said. “There are a lot of great players and to be considered among them is very flattering.”

It wasn’t even close: St. Louis was first on 97 of 105 ballots and amassed 1,016 points, while runner-up Jarome Iginla of the Calgary Flames was second with two firsts and 253 points.

“We’ve got a lot of guys on our team who deserve credit,” said St. Louis, a 5-foot-8 dynamo who was one of the smallest men ever to win the scoring title. “You can’t do all this with just two or three guys.”

He beat out Colorado captain Joe Sakic and Florida goalie Roberto Luongo for the Pearson. Sakic was the last player (2001) before St. Louis to win the Pearson and the Hart in the same year.

Tortorella, who starred at the University of Maine from 1978-81, was the first U.S.-born coach to win the Adams Award. San Jose’s Ron Wilson was second and Calgary’s Darryl Sutter was third in the voting.

Boston’s Andrew Raycroft won the Calder Trophy as top rookie after getting 93 of the 105 available first-place votes. He went 14-6-3 in his last 23 games to lift the Bruins to first place in the Northeast Division.