Connor McDavid finished second in Hart Trophy voting this week, losing out to Nikita Kucherov by just 10 points. He led the NHL in scoring, won the Ted Lindsay Award for a record-tying fifth time and by most measures had one of the best individual seasons in recent memory.
So the question worth asking is should he have won? And when you look at how close the voting actually was, it’s hard not to at least raise an eyebrow at two specific ballots.
Kucherov won with 1,436 voting points to McDavid’s 1,426, the third-tightest Hart race in thirty years under the current system. Both players received a significant share of first-place votes. Kucherov had 72, McDavid had 68, with Nathan MacKinnon picking up 52.
What complicates things is that two voters placed McDavid fifth on their ballots. Under the weighted system, the points go 10–7–5–3-1 for first through fifth place. A fifth-place vote is worth one point; a fourth-place vote is worth three. Had those two voters moved McDavid up just one spot, that’s an extra four points across both ballots and enough to cut the gap from 10 to 6. Move him higher and he wins.
McDavid only received two fifth-place votes in his final tally (68–62–56–10-2) in the voting breakdown. Apparently, two voters ranked the NHL’s leading scorer fifth, and it cost him the trophy.
An argument for McDavid as MVP
Connor McDavid’s season saw him bag the Art Ross and the Ted Lindsay, surely he’s not the fifth most valuable player in the league?
McDavid finished with 48 goals and 138 points in 82 games, effectively first in the NHL in points and assists (90), third in goals. He recorded a point in 68 of 82 games, with 43 multi-point performances and 54 power play points. It was his sixth Art Ross Trophy and the second-highest point total of his career.
He did it on an Oilers team that went 41–30–11 and exited the playoffs in the first round. McDavid led the team in every major offensive category by a significant margin. Pittsburgh Penguins beat writer Josh Yohe, who voted for McDavid, summed it up: “Edmonton was legitimately a terrible team without McDavid. Kuch was surrounded by a bunch of stars, the Coach of the Year, and the Vezina winner.”
That said, Kucherov’s win isn’t entirely unfair. He led the league with 1.71 points per game, his 130 points were 42 ahead of the next Lightning scorer, and Tampa outperformed expectations all season. Vasilevskiy won the Vezina, Cooper won the Jack Adams. Voters who went Kucherov saw a player making an entire organization better. And by the way, Kucherov wasn’t even on two ballots at all, while McDavid was on every single one.
The Lightning were a competitive team with or without Kucherov this year. They had the Vezina winner in net and the Jack Adams coach behind the bench. The Oilers had McDavid. The gap in team dependence is significant, and it should have mattered more to those two voters who somehow slotted McDavid fifth.
McDavid won the Ted Lindsay Award voted by the players for the fifth time, tying Gretzky for most all-time. The people who play against him every night have no confusion about who the best player in the league is.
So I guess, the Hart loss comes down to this. Two writers decided the league’s leading scorer, on a team that needed him more than almost any star needs his team, was the fifth-most valuable player in the NHL. That’s a really hard position to defend. Ten points and two fifth-place votes is all that separates McDavid from his fourth Hart. It’s a frustrating result, and it’s fair to call it what it is, a snub.
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Every person who is eligible to vote, should be required to disclose their votes to the public.