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?

 

[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.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I think it depends on how you interpret the question.

The Hart trophy (or any other award) should be based on a player's performance over one specific season. I don't find it offensive (or even especially surprising) that sometimes the Hart winner will have a non-HOF career (ie Theodore, Hall).

On the other hand - sometimes information from subsequent years can confirm (or refute) a decision. As I wrote about in this old thread, in 2006, few people appreciated how good Lundqvist was, or how much he impacted the Rangers' turnaround. (If you look at why the Rangers improved so much, it was primarily due to goal prevention, rather than goals scored - and Lundqvist, rather than Jagr, was probably the single biggest reason for the team's improvement). I would argue that this information was known to us at the time, but most hockey fans (myself included) gave credit to the future Hall of Famer having a great bounce-back year, rather than an unknown goalie, who had been drafted five years earlier in the 7th round. With hindsight, I'm more comfortable that the voters made the right decision (picking Thornton over Jagr), because some of the Rangers' turnaround was mis-attributed to Jagr instead of Lundqvist.

 

[Crosby2010]

I was alright with Matthews winning it in 2022. There wasn't a player who blew the doors down to stop him either. And 60 goals is a nice shiny number the voters like. McDavid is so good that his problem is he competes against himself, not everyone else. In 2021 he had a clearly Hart winning season, and he blew the competition out. In 2022 he still won the scoring title but only had 123 points. Gaudreau and Huberdeau both had 115. Draisaitl 110. So he had company. In 2021 and 2023 he had no company at all. He was on his own. Not so much in 2022. The Art Ross race was actually pretty tight up until the last couple weeks of the season where McDavid eventually pulled away. He had 13 points in his last 5 games for example. Now for me, I can't understand why McDavid didn't win the Lindsay award. He was still the best player that year, by definition I can see Matthews winning the Hart, but a 106 point guy over a 123 point guy winning the Lindsay? Didn't make sense.

 

[wetcoast]

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?

In a word, NO

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?

People should only use that particular season as rational for their vote in said season.

Also there is too much focus on counting trophy winners, being trophy worthy has value as well.

We just live in a society where sometimes too much emphasis is placed on winning and seasons virtually as good are shrugged off.