I assume you meant in OV's rocket seasons? Which rocket season was he not at least a top 10 player?
07/08: #1 (hart, Lindsay, Ross)
08/09: #1 (hart, Lindsay)
12/13: #1 or #2 (hart)
13/14: hard to say because of his -35
14/15: #1 skater (2nd in hart voting, Lindsay finalist)
15/16: debatable (6th in hart voting)
17/18: debatable (9th in hart voting)
So 4/7x he was the best skater. And for 15/16 and 17/18 the argument for him being top 10 is stronger than him not being top 10. It's basically only 13/14 that he wasn't.
I'm not arguing rocket > ross, I voted ross. Just asking about OV.
Yeah, that -35 season definitely comes to mind. Plus minus isn’t perfect but anybody who had the league’s worst +/- at -35 was not a top-10 player.
15-16, I don’t remember him being one of the best players. Kane, Thornton, Karlsson, Doughty, Holtby, Benn, Kopitar, and Crosby all come to mind as guys who were pretty clearly better. He only finished with 71 points.
17-18, same case for the regular season, guys like McDavid, Kucherov, Giroux, MacKinnon, Hall, Malkin, Kopitar were all clearly better. The playoffs seriously bring his stock up and I wouldn’t be against calling him a top-5 player for the regular season and playoffs combined but I’m just talking regular season.
And this season, he’s clearly below Kucherov, Gaudreau, Kane, McDavid, Crosby, Burns, and Giordano.
The Hart Trophy is a narrative/reputation award like any other. For example, you mention 2016 where Ovechkin was 6th in Hart Trophy voting, but
Jagr was 7th at the age of 43, with 66 points. Ovechkin is a living legend and he, just like Jagr, will always get some extra love in voting for those kinds of awards. So I don’t think you can just use Hart votes to say he was definitely top-10 in those seasons.
And maybe he was actually top-10 in those season, but he was definitely on the lower end of the top-10. There were at least 5 guys that were clearly better than him in 3 of the 7 seasons where he won the Richard. That’s why I said “top-5/10”, so that I could cover my tracks.
Ovechkin isn’t the only one though, he’s just an example. You could also point to Stamkos in 2010, Cheechoo in 2006, Nash in 2004, and Hejduk in 2003 as Rocket Richard winners who
definitely weren’t the best player in the NHL in the year they won. You can’t really do the same with any Art Ross winners.