Hart Trophy

(Most valuable player)

Most deserving:

Leon Draisaitl, Edmonton Oilers

This award is given to “the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team,” with every voter left to decide what the term valuable means for themselves. To be valuable a player must contribute to wins and that’s been proven in the voting record. Every Hart winner since 2005-06 has ranked in the top three for point shares, a modification of Bill James’s wins shares used in Major League Baseball, with the NHL version determining how many standings points a player contributed. This year that short list includes David Pastrnak, Draisaitl and Artemi Panarin.

Draisaitl won his first Art Ross Trophy with 110 points, making him the only player to reach the 100-point plateau this season. The 24-year-old also finished 13 points ahead of teammate Connor McDavid, a former Hart Trophy winner himself, who was second. If we adjust Draisaitl’s point tally to an 82-game schedule with other caveats to make an apples-to-apples comparison to players from different eras he projects to 128 adjusted points, good enough for 38th on the all-time adjusted points list and the same as the reigning Hart winner Nikita Kucherov had last season.

Plus, Draisaitl also led the league in goals created, another metric illustrating his importance to his club.

One more thing. Before you try and argue Draisaitl had a phenomenal season because he and McDavid skate together often, consider Draisaitl skated 610 minutes at even strength without McDavid on the ice this season and the Oilers outscored opponents 35 to 26 during that time.

“I think I’ve always been more of the pass-first type of guy, but I knew early on in my career in the NHL that I have to be a threat to shoot once in a while, too, otherwise I’m too predictable,” Draisaitl said. “It’s just something I’ve worked on constantly during the summer, in season, whenever it was, so it’s something I had to put into my game.” yet opponents had a relatively low quality of shot when he was on the ice (6.4 expected goals against per 60 minutes, 37th out of 104 qualified defensemen). whereas Hellebuyck allowed six more than expected.