Too soon?

Yahoo Sports isn't wasting any time, and in its defense the season is moving along in rapid fashion and is already about 10 percent completed. But it's a little early to be already projecting the end-of-season awards for the NHL, isn't it? But I do appreciate Yahoo's puck coverage and rarely tread on ESPN's shove-it-down-our-throats via overkill obsession with the NBA, SEC football, the Yankees and Red Sox, and Skip Bayless, while essentially sending a strong group of hockey writers into the bullpen for strictly middle relief appearances.

But I digress back to Yahoo's early returns on the Hart, Vezina, Norris, Calder etc. frontrunners. So it's no surprise the Sharks' surprising 5-0 start suddenly has Jeremy Roenick's attention and thrust San Jose back from the dead. You'd think he would just let Marleau's play speak for itself, but Roenick is apparently auditioning to be Patrick Marleau's public relations manager, and Yahoo Sports has determined Marleau's torrid scoring binge five games into the season puts him atop the Hart Trophy pecking order, so  five games into the season, Patty may as well start shopping for a new suit to flaunt on the red carpet in Vegas for the NHL Awards show in the summer. Look at the results (with total points scored in the survey made by Yahoo's hockey scribes):

Hart Trophy

1. Patrick Marleau, San Jose Sharks (20)
2. Thomas Vanek, Buffalo Sabres (9)
3. Martin St. Louis, Tampa Bay Lightning (6)
4. Marian Hossa, Chicago Blackhawks (5)
5. Corey Crawford, Chicago Blackhawks (4)

What does this mean? Nothing, except that it will set up Marleau for failure and draw the same tired arguments about his "streaky scorer" label  shortly after the Sharks' red-hot top line and sizzling first power play unit hit a couple rough patches. And you know eventually that will happen because teams just don't match up as well with certain opponents. Plus, nobody in this era in the NHL can keep up the kind of pace Marleau, Joe Thornton and Joe Pavelski have set so far. But this is what we do in sports journalism: You're a superstar one day, and a stiff the next. And in this era of Twitter haters throwing Molotov Cocktails from the comforts of home keyboards, praise and criticism both are inflated too high.

Marleau isn't the only San Jose connection to the awards race. Antti Niemi ranked fifth in Yahoo's Vezina rankings for the top goalie, and even Coach Todd McLellan got some second-place love for the Jack Adams Award for coach of the year. And who was McLellan trading? Joel Quenneville of the Blackhawks of course. After all, the Blackhawks are 6-0, the Sharks are just 5-0.