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Well I have covered six of the past seven Hart Trophy votes and so far I have only had two discrepancies with the voters. Both times I saw things differently I felt Sidney Crosby should have won the award (2010 over H Sedin and 2013 over Ovechkin).

Today's blog will take a look at the 2014 Hart Trophy which happens to be the most recent one handed out. Sidney Crosby won the award for just the second time in real life, will he make it a fourth time winning the award within this blog series?

Here was the actual voting for the 2014 Hart Trophy:

1. Sidney Crosby, PIT 1341 (128-8-1-0-0)
2. Ryan Getzlaf, ANA 877 (5-96-28-5-0)
3. Claude Giroux, PHI 435 (2-15-42-27-19)

This was a runaway vote in real life, lets take a look if that was the case in real life.

Here are their offensive numbers





Sidney Crosby has more goals and assists than either of the other two finalists. Crosby was the only player in the league to hit the 100 point barrier. In fact no other player even reached the 90 point barrier in 2013-14.

What kinds of roles did these players get put in?





Ryan Getzlaf appears to have played in the toughest role. Crosby is his equal in quality of competition but Getzlaf receives less offensive zone starts. Claude Giroux leads this group in offensive zone starts and also faces the easiest competition.

Sidney Crosby has the biggest blue bubble and that is because he was the owner of a +7.1% relative Fenclose percentage. Ryan Getzlaf was at +1.5% and Claude Giroux came in at +5.0%.

Here are the raw possession numbers:





Crosby is the clear cut front runner here. Despite playing on a Penguins team that had tremendous depth issues amongst the forward ranks, Crosby was still able to thrive possession wise while playing in a shutdown role. The truth is that Crosby would have been a worthy finalist for the Selke Trophy in 2013-14 as well.

Conclusion

This was one of the easier years to call. Crosby was finally able to play in a full season and he did not disappoint. He dominated the 2013-14 NHL regular season.

This is Crosby's fourth Hart Trophy in this blog series, two shy of his actual total of two in real life.

All in all the voters did a nice job the past seven years. They were five for seven the way I see things.

Here is the summary of this week long series:




2008 Hart Trophy is here

2009 Hart Trophy is here

2010 Hart Trophy is here

2011 Hart Trophy is here

2012 Hart Trophy is here

2013 Hart Trophy is here

I hope you enjoyed the series. I will be back from vacation tomorrow and should have some current Penguins stuff to write about.

Thanks for reading!

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