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.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

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.

I think Matthews was a bad choice for the Hart in 2022. It's become clearer with hindsight, but the voters should have known better at the time.

True, McDavid wasn't ahead of Gaudreau and Huberdeau by a lot. But what does that say about Matthews, who finished 9 points behind both of them?

Unless you're looking at goal-scoring in isolation, McDavid was more productive. He outscored Matthews by 17 points. He outscored him at even strength (very close) and on the powerplay (not close at all). He led his team in scoring by a wider margin. Even if you take the position that secondary assists have no value (for the record, I disagree with this), McDavid is still ahead. He scored more points per game too. It was telling that, at the time, many of the people advocating for Matthews (on HFBoards) had to use obscure stats (ie non-EN ES primary points per game) to make the case.

It's true that Matthews missed nine games - but that's not a good thing. Mario Lemieux was the last forward to win the Hart while missing so many games (Matthews isn't exactly at that level). The fact that the Leafs had a better record in the games that Matthews missed should be a pretty good argument against him being the most valuable player. (Granted, it's a small sample size, but it's still not a good look).

Supposedly Matthews was much better defensively, but I don't see it. At 5v5, he was on the ice for 10 more goals against, despite playing on the stronger team. On a per-minute basis, ie personal GAA, he's much worse. (It's true that Matthews had bad luck and his expected goals against were quite a bit lower. My opinion is, when looking back at a specific season, we should evaluate players on what happened, even if it was bad luck. In any case, this argument is self-defeating. McDavid was playing with inept teammates, and if we look at "expected" results, he would have been up around 140 points, in which case, he would have easily won the Hart). Believe it or not, McDavid had fewer offensive zone starts at 5v5 (65% vs 60%). McDavid got more PK ice time (though it was a very low amount for both players). Matthews blocked more shots and had more takeaways, but that's a pretty shaky case for most valuable player.

I think Matthews won the Hart due to voter fatigue (McDavid won the trophy unanimously the year before) and some statistical trivia (50 goals in 50 games). A lot of people also made a big deal out of Matthews scoring 60 goals (the first time someone reached that milestone since Ovechkin in 2008), but it's also partly a result of the league becoming higher scoring. Two players surpassed 60 the very next season.

 

[authentic]

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.

Atleast in Matthews case you could say he actually had the best season, unlike Hall. Excluding empty net points it was 1.48 to 1.46 for McDavid in points per game while Matthews had almost 2 minutes less time on ice and over a minute less on the powerplay per game. While the bulk of his points were obviously goals and he was better defensively. He objectively had the best season in the league that year.

 

[authentic]

Just saw HOs post, yeah taking all that into account (but remember McDavid had more powerplay time of course which Matthews would’ve surely added a few more points with another minute per game) you could say McDavid maybe should’ve won, but it was by no means a robbery or undeserving. 51 goals in a 50 game stretch was quite remarkable, as he was the first to do it in over 30 years at any point of the season and even Ovechkin never had a 50 game stretch adjusted for era with that many goals in a single season.

 

[Staniowski]

Atleast in Matthews case you could say he actually had the best season, unlike Hall. Excluding empty net points it was 1.48 to 1.46 for McDavid in points per game while Matthews had almost 2 minutes less time on ice and over a minute less on the powerplay per game. While the bulk of his points were obviously goals and he was better defensively. He objectively had the best season in the league that year.

Yeah, any player in Matthews' situation in '22 would almost always win the Hart.

 

[Crosby2010]

I think Matthews was a bad choice for the Hart in 2022. It's become clearer with hindsight, but the voters should have known better at the time.

True, McDavid wasn't ahead of Gaudreau and Huberdeau by a lot. But what does that say about Matthews, who finished 9 points behind both of them?

Unless you're looking at goal-scoring in isolation, McDavid was more productive. He outscored Matthews by 17 points. He outscored him at even strength (very close) and on the powerplay (not close at all). He led his team in scoring by a wider margin. Even if you take the position that secondary assists have no value (for the record, I disagree with this), McDavid is still ahead. He scored more points per game too. It was telling that, at the time, many of the people advocating for Matthews (on HFBoards) had to use obscure stats (ie non-EN ES primary points per game) to make the case.

It's true that Matthews missed nine games - but that's not a good thing. Mario Lemieux was the last forward to win the Hart while missing so many games (Matthews isn't exactly at that level). The fact that the Leafs had a better record in the games that Matthews missed should be a pretty good argument against him being the most valuable player. (Granted, it's a small sample size, but it's still not a good look).

Supposedly Matthews was much better defensively, but I don't see it. At 5v5, he was on the ice for 10 more goals against, despite playing on the stronger team. On a per-minute basis, ie personal GAA, he's much worse. (It's true that Matthews had bad luck and his expected goals against were quite a bit lower. My opinion is, when looking back at a specific season, we should evaluate players on what happened, even if it was bad luck. In any case, this argument is self-defeating. McDavid was playing with inept teammates, and if we look at "expected" results, he would have been up around 140 points, in which case, he would have easily won the Hart). Believe it or not, McDavid had fewer offensive zone starts at 5v5 (65% vs 60%). McDavid got more PK ice time (though it was a very low amount for both players). Matthews blocked more shots and had more takeaways, but that's a pretty shaky case for most valuable player.

I think Matthews won the Hart due to voter fatigue (McDavid won the trophy unanimously the year before) and some statistical trivia (50 goals in 50 games). A lot of people also made a big deal out of Matthews scoring 60 goals (the first time someone reached that milestone since Ovechkin in 2008), but it's also partly a result of the league becoming higher scoring. Two players surpassed 60 the very next season.

I never follow the secondary assists thing, it's never been a key point in debates for me.

I thought I'd see if my memory was correct on this based on how surprisingly close the scoring race was at the end of the year. And my memory was correct.

5 games left in the season this is how the point totals looked:
McDavid - 110 points
Huberdeau - 108 points
Gaudreau - 108 points

I mean, that's close. McDavid goes on an absolute tear and gets 13 points in his last 5 games and pulls away. But it wasn't a lock with even so much as 5 games left. Even Matthews at that same time had 102 points. So maybe the thought was that people's minds were made up already and the final 5 games was more or less filler. I think those games are still important, but I am trying to gouge how this might have been viewed. A classic case of McDavid competing against himself. When you are as good as he is, I think the expectation is that you have a bigger gap between a couple of LWers with career years. Like I said, he was his own worst enemy to the voters.

 

[filinski77]

Matthews deserved the Hart, and was the best player in the league that year.
-> Wins the rocket by 5 goals despite playing 7 less games than #2 (Draisaitl)
-> Very clear leader in goals/gp
-> 6th in points, but was only 9 points behind #2 in the league while also playing 9 less games than #2 in points
-> 3rd in points/gp, McDavid at #1 had 1.54 and Matthews had 1.45. All this while also having an astronomical advantage over McDavid and Kuch in goal scoring.

 

[The Panther]

2022 was one of those many seasons where the Hart is up for grabs, and you can make a pretty good case for three or four guys to win it. (I actually thought Johnny Gaudreau deserved it as much as anyone, but in retrospect it was really that entire forward line as a unit that dominated the League that year.) I'm... sort of okay with Matthews having won it... Not necessarily the best choice, but a good enough one. (The Maple Leafs' franchise kind of needed it, too.)

2018, no. Not Taylor Hall. That's another season when it was up for grabs. McDavid was clearly the best player in the League, but the Oilers crapped out, so voters passed on him. I personally think MacKinnon should have won it that season, but with only 74 games played, voters seemed to tune him out a bit, too. The problem was that Jersey got hot down the stretch, with Hall on the highlight reel every night to close out the season, and swing-voters who are undecided will go with whoever gets hot late in the season. There was also the 'feel-good' narrative of Jersey's having not made the playoffs in forever.

2006, I've always argued that Jagr deserved it more than Thornton, simply because he played the whole season for the NYR while Thornton played for two teams and he wasn't of any great value to Boston. The Rangers also improved enormously from pre-Lock Out and had their first good season in ages.

 

[Dingo]

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 just think the Hart badly needs to not be looked at as "the best player of the year"

but rather

"the player, usually a forward, who carries the most media attention, or has a cinderella-type storyline that people like, especially if he was traded to a non-playoff team and then they made the playoffs with him. He must also be on a playoff team, but not a team that is too loaded with talent because then he didnt carry them, unless, of course, he is a media darling, typically a highly touted Canadian who was scouted highly and expected to be great, and finally had a great season, but it can also be a European or American who is a media darling who finally had a great season, ESPECIALLY if he plays for a big market team."

Then its cool. Once you start giving it the funny little sideglance you give the Lady Byng, then it doesnt matter that much, anymore.

 

[authentic]

I never follow the secondary assists thing, it's never been a key point in debates for me.

I thought I'd see if my memory was correct on this based on how surprisingly close the scoring race was at the end of the year. And my memory was correct.

5 games left in the season this is how the point totals looked:
McDavid - 110 points
Huberdeau - 108 points
Gaudreau - 108 points

I mean, that's close. McDavid goes on an absolute tear and gets 13 points in his last 5 games and pulls away. But it wasn't a lock with even so much as 5 games left. Even Matthews at that same time had 102 points. So maybe the thought was that people's minds were made up already and the final 5 games was more or less filler. I think those games are still important, but I am trying to gouge how this might have been viewed. A classic case of McDavid competing against himself. When you are as good as he is, I think the expectation is that you have a bigger gap between a couple of LWers with career years. Like I said, he was his own worst enemy to the voters.

This is all true but Matthews had a best in the world season for reasons mentioned already. I don’t see where people are getting that McDavid was robbed really.

Think of it this way, if these players were to repeat that season several times in a row, each playing 70+ games, one has .9 points per game gap, that gap erases entirely without empty net points, and the other player scores at a 60-70 goal pace instead of 40-50, and he’s better defensively on top of it all, I don’t think it would be controversial to consider the goal scorer better.

 

[Ishdul]

The 2002, 2011 and 2018 Hart trophy votes were hotly debated in the moment, so it's not just the benefit of hindsight that makes us question them. I really don't want the voters to consider future value/career value when voting for awards, half because that's not what the awards should be about and half because they'd get it wrong.

For 2002, Iginla's year seemed to come out of nowhere; he was 43rd in scoring the year before behind guys like Donald Audette, Ray Ferraro and Shawn MacEachern, he was young but not super young and seemed to settle into being a capable first liner but not a real star. If anything Theodore was seen as a better bet at the time as a superstar being a young highly touted goaltender who had a dominant season on a bad team in his 2nd year as a starter. Roy wasn't the right choice but would have been "defensible choice" for an older all time great who hadn't won before.

For 2011, Perry goes on a massive run at the end to take the goals lead and get close enough in points, and in the last quarter of the season Stamkos went from likely winner to completely out of the running. I think Daniel Sedin's candidacy is hurt for a lot of the same reasons his brothers was helped the year before. It's seen as a pretty weak year for candidates with Malkin and Crosby hurt, Ovechkin having a down year and none of the goalies or defensemen being taken seriously as candidates.

For 2018, the Oilers not coming close to the playoffs and therefore removing the Art Ross winner from the equation really opens up the MVP voting to strange new places. There was a time in the middle of the season where people were talking about the scoring disparity between Hall and the rest of the Devils but that talk seemed to die down (I think when Hall was briefly hurt?) before picking up again at the very end. In a year with three 100 point scorers, a total that basically guaranteed a landslide MVP win in the previous few years, none of them end up nominated. The Ted Lindsay winner finishing 5th for the Hart has to be the biggest anomaly. Kopitar's gap over the #2 scorer on the Kings is also pretty large in a year where he won the Selke but he didn't really get a lot of support for the #1 spot. At the time Hall and MacKinnon both recovered from very bad years before to score at 100 point pace, so it was probably a lot of guess work to project how they would both do going forward. MacKinnon is a few years younger but Hall had a few better seasons than MacKinnon had to that point.

I don't know if 2022 was actually controversial in the way the others were. Matthews won the vote convincingly (119 first place votes to 29 for McDavid) and he's going down as a far better player than Theodore, Perry or Hall. That also was not a weak year for candidates.

 

[Crosby2010]

This is all true but Matthews had a best in the world season for reasons mentioned already. I don’t see where people are getting that McDavid was robbed really.

Think of it this way, if these players were to repeat that season several times in a row, each playing 70+ games, one has .9 points per game gap, that gap erases entirely without empty net points, and the other player scores at a 60-70 goal pace instead of 40-50, and he’s better defensively on top of it all, I don’t think it would be controversial to consider the goal scorer better.

I'm alright with Matthews winning the Hart. There are certainly more runaway favourites in history that were lock cinches, but he's hardly the most controversial one to win it. In all honesty, it is just between him and McDavid. Shesterkin is 3rd, but he's a distant 3rd behind McDavid. And to be honest Matthews has 119 to 29 1st place votes over McDavid. People talk about it like its a Messier/Bourque 1990 finish. It wasn't.

My thought is, McDavid should have still been a 1st team all-star and the Lindsay winner. That's the only thing I'll say on his behalf. As for the Hart I think Matthews fits the requirements if we are honest about it. No issues. If anything I wonder why Mario didn't get more love in 1992 over Messier, or was that just voter fatigue by then?

The 2002, 2011 and 2018 Hart trophy votes were hotly debated in the moment, so it's not just the benefit of hindsight that makes us question them. I really don't want the voters to consider future value/career value when voting for awards, half because that's not what the awards should be about and half because they'd get it wrong.

I think what has happened is that the winner in all three of these didn't have a Hall of Fame career and there is a bit of revisionist history. Because I'll be honest, Theodore was my pick in 2002. He was outstanding the 2nd half of the season. Take a look at that Habs roster, how can anyone think they are a playoff team? But they were, thanks to Theodore. Iginla if anything got too much credit for his early strong start. The Flames were miles out of the playoff race and Iginla did have a great year by leading the NHL in goals and points but this is the weakest offensive season that we may ever have seen. There wasn't much competition. I'm fine giving it to Theodore, he earned it.

2011 I think Tim Thomas if he plays in more than 57 games wins the Hart. 57 games is not a lot when you are looking at Hart candidates. Brodeur was always doing north of 70. I think for a goalie to win it he's got to be in nearly all of his team's games. Thomas was in the majority, but he still wasn't in enough of them. This was also another low offensive season. Crosby was the runaway winner at the halfway point before getting his concussion. Perry gets a goal a game in his final 20 games so I can see why he wins this.

2018 Hall wins it and MacKinnon was his only close competition. I had MacKinnon simply because he was the better player either way I thought, and had a better year. Hall had a great year too, but I think him having 93 points and then the next Devil getting 52 had a lot of miles to it.