It was a year of firsts in the GWMHL, with two new teams and a new playoff format, but it also saw many remarkable personal and team achievements.

Sidney Crosby is now 6th in career points with 1,286, just ahead of Alex Ovechkin‘s 1,280. It should be fun to see these two duel it out in the late stages of their careers. Crosby also climbed to 3rd place in assists (811), although he has a long way to go to challenge Joe Thornton’s 1,144. Claude Giroux (672) and Anze Kopitar (666) both entered the top 10 in assists this season. Likewise, Patrick Kane broke into the top 10 in career goals with 486 and will almost certainly hit the 500-goal milestone next season.

Hulking defenseman Zdeno Chara passed the 1,500 game mark to take the 3rd spot at 1,556, passing Nicklas Lidstrom and Jarome Iginla along the way. If he plays 71 games next year — and that may be a big if — he would become GWMHL’s reigning GP leader, with no active player in a position to challenge any time soon. Chara also became the league’s all-time leader in hits with 3,342, passing Keith Tkachuk’s 3,267.

Kirill Kaprizov posted the second most goals by a rookie (57) in league history, behind only Teemu Selanne’s historic 73-goal year in ’93-’94. He’s also just the fifth GWMHL rookie to surpass 50 goals.

On the franchise front, both expansion teams made the history books in their inaugural years. Not surprisingly, the Clarington Coyotes posted the second lowest goals per game (1.94) ever, appropriately sandwiched between South Park (now Great Lakes) (1.73) and Vancouver (1.96) from their own first years.

The Hershey Bears blocked 379 shots, the single-season GWMHL record, and Clarington blocked the second most ever with 355. In fact, five of the top 10 shot-blocking totals were from this season — big year for standing in the way of frozen rubber.