The NHL has announced each teams nominee for the King Clancy Award that goes “to the player who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and has made a noteworthy humanitarian contribution in his community.” To no one’s surprise, Blake Wheeler has been nominated by the Winnipeg Jets this year.
Wheeler makes a lot of sense for the Jets. He gained attention in 2020 when he called out Premier Brian Pallister for his inaction earlier in the pandemic when cases were rising and nothing was being done. He has also gained attention for his comments on the political situation in the US various times including May/June of 2020 when we were all in a lockdown and the US was dealing with a reckoning with racial injustice.
I did look on the Jets website to see what other community initiatives he had participated in and they did not even have his nomination posted. But history has shown us that Wheeler is involved in the community for various causes and it is likely that he continued being that way this year even as everything was thrown into chaos with COVID. The NHL will announce the finalists in the coming weeks.
