2023-24 Hart Memorial Trophy finalists: Nikita Kucherov, Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid

[EXTRAS]

Would have liked to have seen Hughes on here. I always feel like they should take the top forward, top dman, and top goalie, and then have a 2nd vote-off between the 3.

 

[keglu]

I see exactly no argument over McDavid coming from Kucherov or Mackinnon.

Argument is pretty straightforward. They both have more goals and points.

 

[MacMacandBarbie]

People look at the numbers in a pure vacuum and ignore all context.

Ironic. You seem to value ‘100 assists’ and ‘1st player to score 69 goals in x years’ at face value without taking into context that it’s in a much higher scoring league that added two expansion teams in the last 6 years. Neither of these seasons are as impressive as Crosby's 2014 campaign where he was the only one who broke 100 points and finished 20% higher in points over 2nd place.

The numbers themselves aren't impressive simply because it hasn't happened in a long time.

 

[Voight]

They give trophies for winning one playoff game now?

News flash, the Hart trophy is a regular season award.

 

[Ncit3]

Would have liked to have seen Hughes on here. I always feel like they should take the top forward, top dman, and top goalie, and then have a 2nd vote-off between the 3.

Are we sure that Hughes was the top dman?

 

[RedHawkDown]

Got to love the mental gymnastics to convince oneself that a player who scores 69 goals on the season and is top 3 among all defensive forwards is not more valuable than a player who scored 40 goals, and contributed negatively to his team while at even strength.



Then again, this was a mere formality because Mackinnon is going to win the Hart because its his turn to win an individual trophy.

He scored 32 more points. The gap is too large to not include Mack.

 

[Leafsfanperson]

Mackinnon had a great season, there's no denying it.

He didn't win the Art Ross.
He didn't win the Rocket.
He isn't nominated for Selke.
He didn't break a 30 year old scoring mark,
He didn't break a 30 year old assist mark.

All of those things happened, and Mackinnon was involved in none of them.

What also happened, is something that has literally never happened before, and the closest instance of it, is from 30 and 40 years ago.


People look at the numbers in a pure vacuum and ignore all context.

Colorado was 3rd in the league in power play time this past season and 2nd in power play opportunities.


Tampa Bay was 23rd in power play time, 16th in power play opportunities.

Edmonton was 31st in power play time, and 19th in power play opportunities.

Toronto was 26th in power play time, and 25th in power play opportunities.


Mackinnon led the league in pp time on ice this year, followed by Rantanen. Makar was 8th.

Kucherov was 4th in the league in pp time on ice.

Matthews was 37th in the league in terms of pp time on ice.

McDavid missed a few games, and ended up 51st in pp time on ice.



In terms of Colorado, their top 3 point producers were on the ice together as often as possible:

Mackinnon with 140 points
Rantanen with 104 points
Makar with 90 points

2/3 of the first line and their #1 defenseman.


In terms of Tampa Bay, they had 5 players above 75 points this year, Kucherov played with the other 4 all year long.


Kucherov with 144 points
Point with 90 points
Stamkos with 81 points
Hedman with 76 points
Hagel with 75 points



In terms of Edmonton, 4 players reached the 75 point mark, with McDavid playing with 2 or 3 of them routinely (depending on the usage of Draisaitl)

McDavid with 132 points
Draisaitl with 106 points
Bouchard with 82 points
Hyman with 77 points



In terms of Toronto, 3 players surpassed the 75 point mark. Matthews played with the 2 of them on the power play, and with one of them for half the season.

Matthews with 107 points
Nylander with 98 points
Marner with 85 points


Matthews played the last 30 games of the season with Domi (47 points) and Bertuzzi (43 points).
Not exactly a point-rich environment in Toronto based on the player usage.
The best offensive defenseman in Toronto - Rielly with 58 points.


Of the 4 players who were in consideration for the Hart Trophy, Matthews had the most unique argument, and by miles the least amount of help from the rest of the team or the officials for that matter.

You can put a chaulk outline around Mak after this post but NPCs decided his winning the Hart in January and you can expect the sports journalist to do some bare minimum critical thinking,we're talking about lazy adult stoners with Communications degrees.

 

[pcruz]

Ironic. You seem to value ‘100 assists’ and ‘1st player to score 69 goals in x years’ at face value without taking into context that it’s in a much higher scoring league that added two expansion teams in the last 6 years. Neither of these seasons are as impressive as Crosby's 2014 campaign where he was the only one who broke 100 points and finished 20% higher in points over 2nd place.

The numbers themselves aren't impressive simply because it hasn't happened in a long time.

I'll grant you that.

What we have never seen before, ever, is a player leading the league in goals and also finishing top 3 in Selke voting.

There have been 3 instances of a player winning the Rocket and finishing within the top 10 in Selke since Jari Kurri did it in the 80s....even if we consider that the Rocket wasn't around all the way back then.

Auston Matthews - Rocket Richard and 10th in Selke voting
Sidney Crosby - Rocket Richard and 10th in Selke voting
Auston Matthews - Rocket Richard and Top 3 in Selke voting (finish is unknown, but he won't win it)



And regardless of the increased scoring league-wide, the top end of the league is just as dominant as it ever was.

Matthews scored 21% more goals than the 2nd placed player, someone who scored more goals on the power play than he did at even strength.

 

[MadLuke]

Got to love the mental gymnastics to convince oneself that a player who scores 69 goals on the season and is top 3 among all defensive forwards is not more valuable than a player who scored 40 goals, and contributed negatively to his team while at even strength.



Then again, this was a mere formality because Mackinnon is going to win the Hart because its his turn to win an individual trophy.

Who is the player that scored 40 goals being talked about ? (or negatively contributed to his team at even strength ?)

McDavid was 60% GF, (+32), Mack 60% GF (+40), Kucherov 54% (+15) on a team that was -26 when he was not on the ice.

 

[ForumNamePending]

Pretty much a toss up between Kucherov and MacKinnon... Actually, I think it should probably go to Kucherov, but MacKinnon will end up winning because it's "his turn", and I guess I'm cool with that. I mean there is certainly better things in the world to be mad about.

Leaf fan, and fine with McDavid being the third finalist.

 

[MadLuke]

In terms of Colorado, their top 3 point producers were on the ice together as often as possible:

Mackinnon with 140 points
Rantanen with 104 points
Makar with 90 points

2/3 of the first line and their #1 defenseman.


In terms of Tampa Bay, they had 5 players above 75 points this year, Kucherov played with the other 4 all year long.


Kucherov with 144 points
Point with 90 points
Stamkos with 81 points
Hedman with 76 points
Hagel with 75 points



In terms of Edmonton, 4 players reached the 75 point mark, with McDavid playing with 2 or 3 of them routinely (depending on the usage of Draisaitl)

McDavid with 132 points
Draisaitl with 106 points
Bouchard with 82 points
Hyman with 77 points



In terms of Toronto, 3 players surpassed the 75 point mark. Matthews played with the 2 of them on the power play, and with one of them for half the season.

Matthews with 107 points
Nylander with 98 points
Marner with 85 points

That goes a bit both ways, how much support when not on the ice they had on their teams, how much they helped their teammate produce, both can be spinned to help or hurt a player Hart worthiness here it seem.

Hyman, is he a 75 points player if he does not play a lot with McDavid this season ? Bouchard ?

Same for Kucherov teammate, are they all 75 pts player without him ?

Not saying that playing on Makar team is not a bit like Coffey back in the days, I am sure it help a lot but it is risky pointing out that some of the best playmakers in the league history had teammate that scored a lot.

Dupuis-Kunitz had some stretch span where they were like Top 5 even strength scorer in the nhl, should we say that hurt Crosby case for the Hart or.... the exact opposite.

 

[Schennanigans]

My vote would go to kuch. But there’s no bad choice.

 

[EXTRAS]

Are we sure that Hughes was the top dman?

No. But whomever would have taken the dman 'hart' trophy. I'm a big makar fan but not sure it's him this year. Who else? Josi? He's pretty important to nashville.

 

[Leaf Fans]

They give trophies for winning one playoff game now?

No. They are not likely to start doing that either. Besides, all of the finalists have won more than one playoff game this year. In fact, Tampa was the only team that has been eliminated so far that boasts a finalist for this award.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I think the only pretzel wrapping here is in trying to ignore the value of playmaking and turning bits of trivia into feats. That’s not to say Matthews wasn’t great, and he wouldn’t be a finalist and even a winner in a lot of other years, but the fact that the best goalscorers aren’t usually good defensively doesn’t hold any value beyond what he objectively brought to the ice. It’s not the most unique player award.

It's an interesting debate, and it comes down to whether people choose to value goal-scoring in isolation, or overall point production.

If we're looking at how many players have led the league in goals, while being a Selke trophy finalist - I think Matthews is the only player in NHL history to do this. (Keeping in mind the Selke only goes back to 1978). There have been some close calls (Sakic was runner-up for the Richard and Selke trophies in 2001; Kurri led the league in goals but was only 5th for the Selke in 1986; Fedorov won the Selke but was 3rd in goals in 1994). But nobody has ever replicated this exact result.

On the other hand - Matthews is a Selke finalist, but only finished 6th in scoring. That's been done many times before. Ron Francis did that both 1995 and 1996, and Pavel Datsyuk did it in 2008 and 2009. Joe Sakic did it in 2001, as did Henrik Zetterberg in 2008. It's not even the first time that a Toronto player has done that! (See Doug Gilmour in 1994). If we start getting into close calls, we can add include names like Sidney Crosby, Peter Forsberg, Daniel Alfredsson, and Martin St. Louis (all of whom were top five in scoring & top four Selke voting in the same season - Matthews was top six & top three).

Ultimately, this can be argued both ways. It's true that we've never seen a player win the Rocket Richard before, while also being a Selke finalist. On the other hand, there are a lot of examples of a player finishing 6th in higher or scoring, while being a Selke finalist. An argument can be made either way as to whether Matthews' season was unique or not.

 

[MacMacandBarbie]

I'll grant you that.

What we have never seen before, ever, is a player leading the league in goals and also finishing top 3 in Selke voting.

There have been 3 instances of a player winning the Rocket and finishing within the top 10 in Selke since Jari Kurri did it in the 80s....even if we consider that the Rocket wasn't around all the way back then.

Auston Matthews - Rocket Richard and 10th in Selke voting
Sidney Crosby - Rocket Richard and 10th in Selke voting
Auston Matthews - Rocket Richard and Top 3 in Selke voting (finish is unknown, but he won't win it)



And regardless of the increased scoring league-wide, the top end of the league is just as dominant as it ever was.

Matthews scored 21% more goals than the 2nd placed player, someone who scored more goals on the power play than he did at even strength.

Fair, we haven't seen that very specific combination of top 3 in Selke, and leading the league in goals. However, I would argue its not that impressive of a feat. We have seen much more impressive feats, like Federov winning the Hart and actually winning the Selke.

I think its great that Matthews blocks shots and occasionally kills penalties, but that doesn't compensate for the fact that he isn't an elite playmaker. Being an elite playmaker is essential if you want to be in these conversations for most impressive player/season.

The players who finished in the top 3 in the Hart voting are elite playmakers, and elite goal scorers. Those are the things that a forward is going to be judged on first and foremost because it has the biggest impact. After that things like two way play, being a physical presence, etc start to factor in.

 

[MacMacandBarbie]

I think the only pretzel wrapping here is in trying to ignore the value of playmaking and turning bits of trivia into feats. That’s not to say Matthews wasn’t great, and he wouldn’t be a finalist and even a winner in a lot of other years, but the fact that the best goalscorers aren’t usually good defensively doesn’t hold any value beyond what he objectively brought to the ice. It’s not the most unique player award.

This was really well said. People are trying to downplay the importance of being an elite playmaker when being considered for the Hart as a forward. Is there any forward in league history that won the Hart without being top 5 in scoring? I am pretty sure the lowest we had was 4(B.Hull) but I could be wrong.

 

[keglu]

This was really well said. People are trying to downplay the importance of being an elite playmaker when being considered for the Hart as a forward. Is there any forward in league history that won the Hart without being top 5 in scoring? I am pretty sure the lowest we had was 4(B.Hull) but I could be wrong.

Matthews was 6th in scoring but second in PPG

 

[daver]

This was really well said. People are trying to downplay the importance of being an elite playmaker when being considered for the Hart as a forward. Is there any forward in league history that won the Hart without being top 5 in scoring? I am pretty sure the lowest we had was 4(B.Hull) but I could be wrong.

Taylor Hall

 

[Ceremony]

There's a nice contrast between posts in here. "I'd give it to MacKinnon or Kucherov but it's close" vs. people seemingly taking it personally that a guy who scored 140 points and was by far the best and most consistent player on one of the league's best teams is even being mentioned. Very odd.

 

[Dolemite]

Oh I'm sorry, english is my 3rd language but I do know what a pundit is. But thanks for worrying

Do you know what a meme is? Here's a little help for you

"Are XYZ in the room with us?"

A sarcastic way of saying that you don't believe XYZ exists or or that XYZ is not relevant to the conversation.

You started a conspiracy and people were calling you out on where you heard that because they never heard it themselves

Therefore they don't believe these "U.S pundits" exists and think you are making this up

Thus I asked you if these so called imaginary "us pundits" are in the room with us

Do you get it now? Or do you need education yourself on the world of internet papi?

All I see are words that are just gibberish. Try watching, reading, and listening to NHL media outputs sometime and you’ll see who is saying this (US broadcasts)

 

[Hockey Outsider]

This was really well said. People are trying to downplay the importance of being an elite playmaker when being considered for the Hart as a forward. Is there any forward in league history that won the Hart without being top 5 in scoring? I am pretty sure the lowest we had was 4(B.Hull) but I could be wrong.

See this thread

Going back to 1948, there were only four seasons when a forward won the Hart, while placing out of the top five in scoring - Ted Kennedy in 1955 (11th in scoring), Bobby Clarke in 1975 (6th), Taylor Hall in 2018 (6th), and Auston Matthews in 2022 (tied for 6th).

 

[pcruz]

Fair, we haven't seen that very specific combination of top 3 in Selke, and leading the league in goals. However, I would argue its not that impressive of a feat. We have seen much more impressive feats, like Federov winning the Hart and actually winning the Selke.

I think its great that Matthews blocks shots and occasionally kills penalties, but that doesn't compensate for the fact that he isn't an elite playmaker. Being an elite playmaker is essential if you want to be in these conversations for most impressive player/season.

The players who finished in the top 3 in the Hart voting are elite playmakers, and elite goal scorers. Those are the things that a forward is going to be judged on first and foremost because it has the biggest impact. After that things like two way play, being a physical presence, etc start to factor in.

These are fair arguments.
The quality of team mates matters.

Toronto relies on Matthews to score the goals for the team, whereas a team like Tampa has 2 players who have scored over 50 goals before in Point and Stamkos.

Edmonton has 3, well 4 I guess.

Colorado has 2.

Toronto has 1.

You're not going to get many assists if nobody on your team can score goals but yourself, it's just not possible.

Outside of Nylander who didn't play with Matthews at even strength, there isn't a scoring threat in Toronto.



However, there is a point of context that isn't talked-about enough:

Colorado and Edmonton are gifted the chance to play against San Jose, Anaheim, and Chicago 12 or more games per year, while Tampa and Toronto only face them in 6 games.

Those 3 teams were borderline OHL teams this year, and SJ had consecutive games allowing 10 goals.

So that's a major advantage for McDavid and Mackinnon in terms of offensive production.

Then again, Colorado had insane amounts of power play time. Again, major advantage for Mackinnon in terms of offense.

The same can be argued for Kucherov, who was among the league leaders in PP time, so advantage to Kucherov there as well.


Position plays a factor too. Centres are required to be much more defensively responsible players, so advantage Kucherov there.



The player who gets none of these advantageous circumstances is Matthews.

He is tasked with being the defensive stalwart on his team, he doesn't get nearly the same amount of pp time, and he plays in the most competitive division which doesn't have any lemons.


One has to look deeper than just the raw numbers when thinking of who was most valuable to their team.


I did an analysis of when goals were scored and score effects for the 4 players.

Matthews scored like 5 goals in garbage-time situations the whole year. Almost all of his goals were to bring his team to within a goal, or game tying, or leading, or to give the team a 2 goal lead.

The other players, despite scoring many less raw goals, had more garbage-time goals - specifically Mackinnon. He had a bunch of goals when the team was up by 3 or 4 goals already, which are completely irrelevant to having won that game.


That's the very definition of valuable, who is it that does things to help the team win.

And scoring or assisting on the 8th goal of a 8-2 game doesn't make a lick of difference to the end result of the game.

 

[pcruz]

It's an interesting debate, and it comes down to whether people choose to value goal-scoring in isolation, or overall point production.

If we're looking at how many players have led the league in goals, while being a Selke trophy finalist - I think Matthews is the only player in NHL history to do this. (Keeping in mind the Selke only goes back to 1978). There have been some close calls (Sakic was runner-up for the Richard and Selke trophies in 2001; Kurri led the league in goals but was only 5th for the Selke in 1986; Fedorov won the Selke but was 3rd in goals in 1994). But nobody has ever replicated this exact result.

On the other hand - Matthews is a Selke finalist, but only finished 6th in scoring. That's been done many times before. Ron Francis did that both 1995 and 1996, and Pavel Datsyuk did it in 2008 and 2009. Joe Sakic did it in 2001, as did Henrik Zetterberg in 2008. It's not even the first time that a Toronto player has done that! (See Doug Gilmour in 1994). If we start getting into close calls, we can add include names like Sidney Crosby, Peter Forsberg, Daniel Alfredsson, and Martin St. Louis (all of whom were top five in scoring & top four Selke voting in the same season - Matthews was top six & top three).

Ultimately, this can be argued both ways. It's true that we've never seen a player win the Rocket Richard before, while also being a Selke finalist. On the other hand, there are a lot of examples of a player finishing 6th in higher or scoring, while being a Selke finalist. An argument can be made either way as to whether Matthews' season was unique or not.

Do a little thought exercise here, just give it a shot.

Take a step back, and mull this over for 30 seconds.

The names you have brought up where Matthews finds himself in the midst of:

Sergei Fedorov
Pavel Datsyuk
Peter Forsberg
Joe Sakic
Ron Francis
Sidney Crosby
Doug Gilmour
Jari Kurri


And then consider that for the most part, these guys fell into this category once in their careers.

Matthews has been the premier goal scorer in his 8 seasons winning the Rocket 3 times, missed out on another one by a single goal in an artificially shortened season, and finished 2nd another time - to Sid's season that put him on this list by coincidence.

He is likely to continue being the Rocket favourite going forward.


Similarly, Matthews has been consistently a great defensive player, and has been getting better with age - as most top end players do.



It would be shocking if Matthews isn't on this list of being at the top of the league for goals and Selke at least a couple more times in his career.


That's just unbelievable!



Anyway, back to the discussion at hand.

 

[daver]

It would be shocking if Matthews isn't on this list of being at the top of the league for goals and Selke at least a couple more times in his career.

Almost as shocking as a another playoff series win.