How fair is it to use later years to grade previous award winners?

[895]

In the 2021-22 season, Matthews won the Hart over McDavid. It was pretty controversial at the time.

A few years later, we can see that Matthews while an elite player, is not even close to McDavid's level.

So is it fair to use this retroactively say, actually yeah, McDavid deserved the Hart that year?


Same with Taylor Hall winning the Hart in 2018. Later years showed he simply was never that level of player and just had an incredible half season.

I suppose this question really hinges on how you interpret "most valuable". To me the best player is clearly the most valuable, in absolute terms. I don't really buy into that "relative value" argument because then neither McDavid, Draisaitl, Malkin or Crosby should ever win because they have another Hart-calibre teammate.


Let me re-ask the question this way:

Let's say the 2022 and 2018 Hart trophies are vacated. The writers are asked to re-vote on who should win them and they are allowed to change their vote. Should/would the winners change?

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[MadLuke]

Let put it that way, sound even more unfair than using the playoff of that season.

Team result without the suspected candidate for the title if they are injured/retired the next season would already be a more fair way to look at it in the spirit of the award for those who take valuable to his team angle to it (even if hockey is noisy and not 100% fair obviously).

Ideally everything before the season and any expectation of what would happen in the future would be removed of people spirit for that type of award, but reputation of excellence built over time is one of the best bias to have (versus knowing the player, for which team they play, their position or in what way they brought value)

y should ever win because they have another Hart-calibre teammate.

Not necessarily having a hart caliber season that year, when Malkin won Crosby played 22 games, when Crosby won Malkin was a rookie getting zero hart vote and the second time played only 60 games.

You can still bring a lot of value to your team even if you play on a team with a possible Hart level player, like Gretzky did on the Oilers, sakic, Roy or Forsberg on the Avs. As team with a single great player and little else go nowhere in that sport.

 

[Staniowski]

The passage of time might (sometimes) bring a situation into better focus (and might other times cause important context to be lost), but generally speaking, award winners are not of much importance anyway. In evaluating players, they're not really of any importance.

Especially awards like the Hart Trophy, about which there's not much agreement on what it's awarded for....best player, most valuable in a general sense, most valuable to a specific team situation?

Nobody thought Hall or Matthews were the best player in those seasons.

 

[JackSlater]

In the 2021-22 season, Matthews won the Hart over McDavid. It was pretty controversial at the time.

A few years later, we can see that Matthews while an elite player, is not even close to McDavid's level.

So is it fair to use this retroactively say, actually yeah, McDavid deserved the Hart that year?


Same with Taylor Hall winning the Hart in 2018. Later years showed he simply was never that level of player and just had an incredible half season.

I suppose this question really hinges on how you interpret "most valuable". To me the best player is clearly the most valuable, in absolute terms. I don't really buy into that "relative value" argument because then neither McDavid, Draisaitl, Malkin or Crosby should ever win because they have another Hart-calibre teammate.


Let me re-ask the question this way:

Let's say the 2022 and 2018 Hart trophies are vacated. The writers are asked to re-vote on who should win them and they are allowed to change their vote. Should/would the winners change?

I don't think you are recognizing what the Hart is (or what it is supposed to be either). It's not the best player trophy. Hall did not win because anyone on Earth thought he was the best player in the NHL, he won because his hot streak propelled his team into the playoffs, and that satisfied the "value" part of the criteria for a lot of voters. Nothing since then would change things. Matthews was also not largely considered the best player in hockey, but I do think that looking at surrounding seasons hurts his case, as I predicted at the time. He won because of trivia - 60 goals, 50 in 50 etc. and the novelty of those things. If voters knew that two players would crack 60 goals next year, it would have hurt Matthews' case. Of course it should not matter what happened in other seasons, but Matthews was rewarded because of what players did not do in some previous seasons.

That doesn't mean that the awards are invalid or should be changed, it just indicates some of the many reasons that people should not put a whole lot of weight on the trophies. That's especially true for someone who actively followed a season. The Hart is not the best player trophy, never has been, and is voted on by people who would still get it wrong sometimes even if that were the goal. The Hart (and pretty much all the other trophies) is a good starting point to learning about a player or a season, but should never be used as an end point.

 

[WarriorofTime]

No, not really in the way you describe. But as time goes by, it's easier to sort of place seasons in a broader context and it shines a light on seasons that look like odd choices once the narrative energy surrounding a season has passed.

Jose Theodore winning the Hart given goalies almost never win the Hart certainly looks like an odd choice with the passage of time, Taylor Hall winning the Hart with 93 points (6th in NHL) as a Winger without a notable 2-way game just before scoring was about to explode certainly looks like an odd choice.

Got a team unexpectedly to the Playoffs Harts never age particularly well imo.