Are you tired of hearing about who should win the Hart Trophy yet?
No? Okay, that’s good, because the greatest scorer in NHL history has now chimed in.
On Wednesday night, Nikita Kucherov tallied his league-leading seventh empty net goal of the season, moving one point ahead of Nathan MacKinnon (again) for the league lead in scoring with 124 points. The two have been flip-flopping for months atop the leaderboard, but a new challenger has emerged.
Connor McDavid, the Hart Trophy winner last season, has been on an absolute tear and is up to 119 points in just 68 games. Given his production the last few months, there’s a very real chance he passes both MacKinnon and Kucherov to take the lead. The number everyone is watching with McDavid is 100, as in assists. He currently has 93, including 12 in his last five games. Seeing as how he isn’t slowing down, 100 assists almost seems like a given at this point, and it hasn’t been done by an NHL player in over 30 years. Could that sway voters?
It does seem like the winner of the Hart Trophy will be one of these three players, barring an Auston Matthews surge at the end of the season. Matthews has slowed down with just seven goals in his last 15 games.
On TNT, Wayne Gretzky gave his opinion on the Hart Trophy debate, and made it clear that MacKinnon, at the very least, should finish top two in the voting.
If you don’t want to watch the video, here’s what is said.
Paul Bissonnette – “If you don’t have Nathan MacKinnon in your top two right now, in today’s NHL, do you think you should have your vote removed?”
Wayne Gretzky – “Oh, 100%. Listen, the Tampa Bay guy might say ‘I’m voting for Kucherov, I saw him play 80 games.’ And then McDavid could be two, and MacKinnon could be three. That’s how he could fall to number three, but not from people in the West. They’ve seen him play too much. The guy’s an animal out there. He’s a horse. Him and McDavid, they deserve all the attention they’re getting.”
MacKinnon is currently on a 35 game point streak at home, and if manages to pick up a point in every home game this season, he’ll break the previous record set by, you guessed it, Wayne Gretzky.
For the folks that are sick of hearing about the Hart Trophy debate, you only have to wait three whole months to find out the winner. Voting is completed at the end of the regular season, but the winner won’t be announced until right before the NHL Draft in late June.
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