Hart to tell: Crowded NHL MVP race
Upwards of a dozen deserving candidates for Hart Trophy this year
Taylor Hall had just scored two more goals in another big New Jersey Devils victory when his general manager asked him a simple question.
“I said, ‘Taylor, what’d you get tonight?”’ Ray Shero recalled. “He goes, ‘We got two points is what we got.’ He had a smile on his face. And I knew he was not going to say two goals. I knew it. We got two points.”
That’s what Shero wanted to hear from the player most responsible for New Jersey’s turnaround from lottery afterthought to playoff contender. Hall is without a doubt the Devils’ most valuable player, but he is one of a dozen candidates for the overall NHL honour. The race for the Hart Trophy is one of the most crowded, convoluted and subjective in decades.
An MVP case can be made for Hall, Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon, Los Angeles’ Anze Kopitar, Washington’s Alex Ovechkin, Philadelphia’s Claude Giroux, Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov, Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin, Boston’s Brad Marchand, Winnipeg’s Blake Wheeler, Nashville’s Pekka Rinne and Edmonton’s Connor McDavid.
The award is given to “the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team.”
Reigning Hart winner McDavid leads the league in points and should take home the player-voted Ted Lindsay Award as the most outstanding player, but the Oilers have long been out of playoff race, hurting his candidacy to some extent and showing how valuable the other contenders are.
Shero said matter-of-factly the Devils “wouldn’t be in the race” without Hall. The same can be said for the Avs without MacKinnon, the Capitals without Ovechkin and the Flyers without Giroux.
“Offensively, he’s such a big part of how we generate goals,” said Ovechkin teammate T.J. Oshie. “Whether he’s scoring them or not, when he’s on the ice, he’s a concern for the other team. Where we’d be at? I don’t know. I’m not sure.” Ovechkin averages 20 minutes a night, has scored 18.7 per cent of the Capitals’ goals and leads the league with 47 while not missing a single game.
Kopitar is another ironman who leads all NHL forwards in ice time, is seventh with 92 points and has the Kings on their way back to the playoffs.
GM Rob Blake said Kopitar means “pretty much everything” to L.A., particularly because the two-way star has done it all without No. 2 centre Jeff Carter for most of the season.
Two-way play extends to Giroux, who has put Philadelphia on his back at times. Giroux has a career-high 98 points — trailing only McDavid and Kucherov — and has also won 58.6 per cent of faceoffs. MacKinnon has provided a spark with 38 goals and 95 points for the Avalanche, who are still fighting to make the playoffs.