Carolina Hurricanes forward Jordan Martinook nominated for 2023 Masterton Trophy
Jordan Martinook of the Carolina Hurricanes is an all-effort kind of player that every team covets and needs in the lineup.
The forward won’t score 30 goals a season. He won’t be used on the power play. Stacking points in a season is not a strength of his game.
But Martinook can play on any line, and has been used in a variety of scenarios by Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour. When the Canes are trying to protect a lead late in regulation, he’s the kind of player Brind’Amour can trust to be on the ice, playing with toughness.
Martinook, 30, has had his share of injuries. He often has played with them. He also has squeezed out every bit of his hockey talent, for the most part, during his career, a big reason he now has played nearly 600 regular-season and playoff games in the NHL.
It’s also a reason Martinook is the Hurricanes’ nominee for the 2023 Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, as voted on by the Carolina chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association (PHWA).
The Masterton Trophy is awarded annually to the NHL player who “best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.” The winner is chosen by a vote of the PHWA chapters at the end of the regular season.
Martinook has played much of this season with center Jordan Staal and winger Jesper Fast on the Canes’ best checking line, often taking on opponents’ most skilled and dangerous players. But he also has slipped up to Sebastian Aho’s line opposite winger Martin Necas since Andrei Svechnikov was lost to a knee injury, and more recently with Teuvo Teravainen fighting a illness and missing some games.
Playing on Aho’s line in a recent game at PNC Arena against the New York Islanders, Martinook had the game-winning goal in the third period as the Canes took a 2-1 Metropolitan Division win.
“He adds pace and energy to your line,” Brind’Amour said. “He’s kind of a catalyst.”
Martinook, now in his ninth NHL season, was a second-round draft pick by the Arizona Coyotes in 2012, taken 58th overall after scoring 40 goals with the Vancouver Giants of the Western Hockey League that 2011-12 season. But it wasn’t as if he quickly slipped into the Coyotes’ lineup.
Martinook spent three seasons with the Portland Pirates in the AHL, not making his NHL debut with the Coyotes until the 2014-15 season. He then put in three seasons with Arizona before the Canes traded for him in May 2018, sending Marcus Kruger to the Coyotes.
Don Waddell, the Canes’ president and general manager, said Martinook has made the team “harder to play against.” In July 2021, after signing Martinook to a three-year contract — at an average of $1.8 million a year — Waddell said the forward had “played a tremendous part in helping to change the culture of our organization” in his first three years with the Canes.
The Masterton Trophy has been awarded annually since 1968 and is named for a former Minnesota North Stars player who died Jan. 15, 1968 after an injury in a game.
The Hurricanes have never had a Masterton winner. Goalie Antti Raanta was last year’s nominee. Staal was one of three finalists in 2018, when Brian Boyle, then with New Jersey, took the award.
