Opinion | Choosing a winner of The Northern Star Award will be just as excruciating as ever

New name, same challenge. Same kinds of questions.

How to evaluate winning a Stanley Cup ring against playing a key role in winning the Davis Cup?

How to judge the accomplishments of a 15-year-old swimmer in a non-Olympic year against the winningest golfer in Canadian history?

Is it more significant to be the third-highest scorer in the NBA, or to win a silver medal in the balance beam at the world championships? To win a 20-kilometre cross-country race for visually impaired athletes, or to finish second at the world championships in the women’s hammer throw?

Nearly impossible to distinguish many of these efforts from the other, right?

But that’s what we do every year when we select Canada’s individual athlete of the year. All the best male and female athletes in every possible sport and discipline go into a big bin, and out comes a winner.

Sometimes two. In 2021, Alphonso Davies and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif shared the honour. Last year, it was gold medal-winning decathlete Damian Warner.

Then, it was known as the Lou Marsh Award, as had been the case since 1936. Starting this year, it is The Northern Star Award.

Sure, it’ll take a little bit of time to get used to the new name. But we’ll get there. Historic athletic performances, after all, write their own narratives in the annals of Canadian sport. A rose by any other name, so to speak.

Three years ago, tennis star Bianca Andreescu’s accomplishments, including winning the singles title at the U.S. Open, were so outstanding that she was a unanimous winner. But that was a rare occasion indeed, and this year we are again faced with a group of elite Canadian athletes that are barely distinguishable from one another in terms of their remarkable talents and results.

In another year, Colorado Avalanche defenceman Cale Makar might be a slam dunk. The stylish rearguard was second to only Nashville’s Roman Josi in points by an NHL defenceman with 86 in 77 regular-season games. In the post-season, the 23-year-old racked up another 29 points in 20 games as the Avs roared to the Stanley Cup championship. Makar, after winning the Norris Trophy as best defenceman during the season, won the Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player in the post-season.

Those are Bobby Orr-like results. Orr won Canada’s athlete-of-the-year honours in 1970, one year after Ottawa Rough Riders quarterback Russ Jackson, and one year before legendary harness racing driver Herve Filion.

What more could Makar do — he has another 23 points in his first 21 games this season — in one year to win The Northern Star Award?

Great question. But it still may not be enough. Remember, Connor McDavid has yet to win this prestigious honour.

There are all kinds of amazing numbers being put up by Canadian athletes this year in a wide variety of sports. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder is scoring more than 31 points a game this season, third in the NBA. That’s rarefied air for a Canadian baller. Three-time Olympian Ellie Black tested similar altitudes by winning silver on the balance beam at the world gymnastics championships, hardly a stage on which Canadians usually dominate. Camryn Rogers of Richmond, B.C. made history of her own by winning a silver medal in the women’s hammer throw at the world championships.

Brian McKeever, meanwhile, swept his three individual events in the Beijing 2022 Paralympics for the fourth Games in a row, winning gold in the 20-kilometre classical, the 1.5-kilometre sprint and the 12.5-kilometre freestyle.

What more could McKeever do to be acknowledged as the first Paralympian since Chantal Petitclerc to be named Canada’s top athlete?

Another great question, one that more than 30 sports journalists and broadcasters from across the nation will grapple with next Wednesday morning before a winner of The Northern Star Award is announced in the early afternoon.

Tennis star Félix Auger-Aliassime, only 22 years old, is front and centre this year after leading Canada to its first ever Davis Cup title last weekend. Auger-Aliassime was perfect in singles, then stepped in for hobbled teammate Denis Shapovalov to win a crucial semifinal doubles match with Vasek Pospisil. The Montrealer also won four ATP tournaments this season, including three in a row.

Golfer Brooke Henderson won two tournaments, and one of them was her second major. Like Auger-Aliassime, she’s ranked sixth in the world in her sport, and has won more pro golf tournaments than any Canadian golfer in history, male or female. She’s only 25.

Marie-Philip Poulin, who steps forward pretty much every time the Canadian national women’s hockey team needs a big goal, did it again at the Beijing Olympics with the game-winner against the U.S. in the gold-medal game. In a year of controversy for Hockey Canada, Poulin stepped forward to make sure the specific concerns of female players were not ignored.

And what about the meteoric rise of Summer McIntosh? At the age of 15, she emerged as Canada’s next great swimming star by winning gold in the 200 metre butterfly and 400-metre medley at the 2022 world aquatic championships in Budapest, then did the same at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England. This may just be the beginning for the Etobicoke native, but how many Canadian athletes actually accomplished more in 2022?

Aaron Brown. Steven Dubois. Sarah Nurse. Max Parrot. Jordan Romano. Nathan Rourke. Isabelle Weidemann. Andrew Wiggins. The list just goes on and on.

The name of the trophy may have changed for 2022. But the prestige that goes to the winner remains the same, and the process of picking just one winner as Canada’s athlete of the year remains just as excruciating as ever.

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