The downfall of Taylor Hall

[Nogatco Rd]

So the hart is for the mvp of a single team? In 32 team league?

That's literally what it is.

It isn't a 'best player in the league' trophy. It's a 'most valuable player' trophy. Who are you valuable to? Is McDavid valuable to the Islanders? Or the Leafs? Of course not. Some people like to interpret the trophy to mean, 'best player in the league." But that's not technically what it is.

So the actual wording of the trophy intentionally opens up grey areas where someone may not be as good as another player, but could indeed be more valuable to their team than the other player was to theirs.

Only way it could be 'most valuable to the league' is if it was a $$$ related trophy. As in, more McDavid/Hall/whoever merchandise was sold, and more arenas were filled to capacity when this player played there than any other.

You can make a strong case that there were better players than Hall that year, but convincing people that those players meant more to their team than Hall did to the Devils would be much tougher.

MVP is technically supposed to go to the player most valuable to their team, yes, but I’m not sure that’s how it’s actually decided each year.

In the same way the “best defenseman” doesn’t always win the Norris.

 

[Sky04]

The season he won Hart he had 93 points in 76 games, tied 6th in the league. Hischier was 2nd in team scoring with 52 points in 82 games. That's just insane.

Meh, Kucherov had a 54 point gap on the next closest Lightning player last season, Bure's 55 point gap to his next closest teammates is way more insane, 92 to 37 points. Paul Kariya might have the most impressive one given he was only 21 years old at the time and a 64 point gap on his next closest teammate.

 

[Grifter3511]

MVP is technically supposed to go to the player most valuable to their team, yes, but I’m not sure that’s how it’s actually decided each year.

In the same way the “best defenseman” doesn’t always win the Norris.

I agree 100%. I think there's a pretty good amount of room for interpretation.

 

[Sentinel]

Is that a confirmed statistic?

Just those 2? assuming the most recent ones still playing are locks

Perry is iffy to be honest

In the past 70 years -- yes.

Perry is iffy but he will get in on a weak year.

 

[banks]

I know it's been mentioned in the thread a bit already, but his performance with Buffalo was a disgrace. I've never seen a hockey player quit on a team as much as he did in 2020. Only 2 (two!) goals in 39 games. And he looked worse than that number suggests.

He was abysmal for them, doing nothing to stop a 18 game losing streak. He was atrocious. Not just snakebit, playing hurt, or adjusting to a new team. No, this was downright lazy quitting. He was invisible at his best. That awful performance just about cancels out his Hart season, in my opinion. He clearly never wanted to play there, and just took the money they offered and planned to get traded later.

Here's some of his Sabres teammates that scored more goals in less games than Hall that season: Anders Bjork, Curtis Lazar, Toby Rieder, Arttu Routsalainen, Rasmus Asplund. How bad do you have to be as a premiere scoring forward when you're getting out produced by that group??