Watch out 50 Cent! Buck 65 is appearing at an awards show near you.

The main reason I felt compelled to comment on the NHL Awards show was because of how brutally horrible the show was. It started with a retrospective of the entire season set to a live performance from Buck 65….yeah I had never heard of him either. Apparently he's Canada's answer to 50 Cent, complete with the exchange rate. He attempted some sort of rap/spoken-word performance put to music that highlighted various items from the past season. Just brutal! I mean the crowd was in a daze. They gave him that polite applause you give to a golfer who just made double-bogey. This performance was a foreshadowing of the night.

Ron MacLean took his annual place as host of the awards gala and tried to entertain the crowd and viewers. The operative term is "tried". MacLean threw out useless hockey references, one after another attempting to link every presenter or award recipient in some way. Just painfully awkward. You could hear the crickets and see the tumbleweeds after he threw out one-liners like: "You'll notice there are no Mighty Ducks here tonight; they're too busy shaving." If he were using obscure archeological references you would have sworn Dennis Miller was hosting. MacLean's performace wasn't helped by the horrendous production value and stage design. The show was a joint broadcast from CBC and ESPN, yet it looked like the show was purely put on using CBC's budget. For whatever reason Sam Roberts was the main musical entertainment for the night and judging by the way MacLean hyped him you would think he had a vested interest in his career. If you have never seen Sam Roberts picture a down on their luck street performer complete with open guitar case. As bad as he was Buck 65 was worse. After his "incredible" opening performance they had him scratching and spinning records in the second balcony. This is an awards show, complete with people dressed in formal black tie wear and there's some guy in the balcony scratching records. Are you kidding me? Who planned this event?

The presenters matched the production value of the show, as it was painfully apparent that not running a dress rehearsal was clearly a mistake. MacLean never knew what end of the stage presenters would come from and the presenters looked like they had no idea what to do. Former old-time players Eddie Shack & Dave Schultz presented the Lady Byng award and Shack had no idea what a teleprompter was or any clue that he was supposed to be reading from it.

Despite all this, a lot can be learned from this year's award show.

1.There is absolutely no budget left in Canadian TV.
2. Award shows like this should not be televised. There's a reason that the NFL, MLB and the NBA avoid the annual awards show by simply announcing the recipients and then arranging press conferences for the media. Although if the NHL went this route we'd all miss out on performances by Buck 65.