Vote for January’s Player of the Month

02 Feb 2012 | - eurohockey.com

Who deserves our monthly award? Our visitors nominated the candidates. Now it is up to you to vote for the winner. January's candidates for the European Player of the Month award are Juha-Pekka Haataja, Radek Duda, Fabrice Lhenry, Yevgeny Kuznetsov, Daniel Grillfors, Petr Tenkrat, Matt Hussey and Simon Gamache.

Who do you think was the most outstanding player in European hockey during the month of January 2012? Select your winner of these eight candidates, nominated by our visitors, in our Facebook vote.

Juha-Pekka Haataja, Kärpät, SM-Liiga
Finished January with an ongoing goal-scoring streak of 8 games. In January he scored 12 goals and 2 assists in 13 games. An incredible change as he started the season with 19 games without a single goal.

Radek Duda, Plzen, Czech Extraliga
He scored 16 points in 9 games in January. The only game he did not score a point was the first one, against Sparta (3.1.2012). He had four 1-point games, two 2-point games, one 3-point and one 5-point(!) game during January. In total, he scored 6 goals and 10 assists. One of the goals was a penalty-shot goal, in which he pulled a Peter Forsberg move.
Currently he is the best in points (50); in goals (23); and sixth in assists (27) in the Extraliga. He needed 43 games for that 50 points.

Fabrice Lhenry, Rouen, Ligue Magnus
Rouen goalie Fabrice Lhenry played a fantastic Continental Cup superfinals, helping Rouen to clinch a historic result.

Yevgeny Kuznetsov, Traktor Chelyabinsk, KHL
In January, Yevgeny Kuznetsov was the captain of the Russian WJC team and led them to the silver medal. Kuznetsov became the best scorer of the tournament with 13 (6+7) points. In the semifinal game against Canada, he scored a hat trick and added one assist. More than that, in KHL he had 12 (6+6) points in 9 games, where 3 of them became game-winning. Kuznetsov is the game-winning goals leader with 8 in the KHL this season, while his nearest challengers have only 5 goals.

Daniel Grillfors, HV71, Elitserien
The defenceman scored 6 goals and added 2 assists in 9 games for HV71 in the Elitserien in January.

Petr Tenkrat, Sparta Praha, Czech Extraliga
Tenkrat is on a 13-game point streak since late December, and scored 13 points in 9 games in January. Sparta won all but one of their games in January.

Matt Hussey, Straubing Tigers, DEL
Hussey played 9 games in January and scored 5 goals and 9 assists. He also had a +5 rating.
He is the best goal scorer in the DEL with 21 goals in only 30 games.

Simon Gamache, Fribourg, NLA
Gamache started the month with a 6-point game (4+2) and in the month's 9 games he recorded 5 goals and 6 assists.

Vote here!