Shove it. That was the message emblazoned on Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger's t-shirt and one can't help but assume it was directed at his band's critics.

After all, the hometown mook-rockers did kick off the show with their dumbest-ever anthem "Something In Your Mouth"-even the edgy host Russell Peters joked "Ay oh, my mom's watching!"-and upon picking up their best album award, a grinning Kroeger quipped "The press are going to have a field day with this one."

But c'mon, Nickelback's hat-trick win was a foregone conclusion. The Junos have always rewarded sales over quality - last year's Feist sweep was a sweet but rare collusion of both - and doling prizes to international success stories helps assuage the national inferiority complex. Even Ben Mulroney, the son of an ex-prime minister, heaped undue praise on the band for deigning to show up at the Junos after selling 27 million records. An award show, mind you, taking place in their own freaking hometown.

Unlike some critics, I'm actually impressed with Nickelback's record sales and especially by their chart longevity in an era where nobody buys albums and releases are forgotten in a flash. But even for an award show that baldly forces a former Canadian Idol contestant to announce that "some awards presented this evening are based in whole or in part on record sales information compiled by Nielson Soundscan," there's simply a quality criteria that Nickelback's music fails to meet.

A lot of deserving winners took home statuettes, though most did so the night before. Many of the more interesting awards are shunted off to a non-televised ceremony - even the single of the year award, which went to Can-hop icon Kardinal Offishall's million-selling cross-border hit "Dangerous." International club kingpin Deadmau5 scored best dance recording, the underrated Divine Brown walked away with best R&B album, The Stills took best alternative and, oddly enough, best new group seven years into their career (and rocked an awesome performance on game night).

Scruffy Montrealer Sam Roberts and his band took the best rock album (albeit mostly because Nickelback wasn't in this category) and Feist returned to pick up the best video statue (for the puppet-tastic "Honey Honey") that she oddly lost last year for her iconic "1,2,3,4."

Of course, Kardi and Roberts won some on-camera prizes, too, for best rap recording and artist of the year, respectively, and rising indie-pop star Lights was a cool best new artist winner - but seriously, get that girl a sandwich.

Dallas Green, meanwhile, was the coolest dude in the room, winning best songwriter, rocking a dorkalicious Les Nesman look, his neck tattoo peeking out just to the left of his brown bowtie, and bringing out Gord Downie for a surprise bring-down-the-house collaboration. A similar summit took place at the end of the show, with young, fiddle-playing, alt-country star Kathleen Edwards crooning alongside cooler-with-age CanRock legend Bryan Adams.

What was great about both performances - and the induction of Loverboy into the hall of fame - was that they reminded us it is possible to be both crowd-pleasing and quality-sounding. I'd like to think the Juno voters that named Nickelback best group and Dark Horse best album were listening, but they probably had something in their ears, as well.