Nathan MacKinnon for the Hart Trophy? We’re listening. At this writing he anchors a line that has been responsible for 89 Avalanche goals while Colorado’s second line has just 45.

There can’t be any better a definition for “most valuable to his team” than that, unless, by that same interpretation, the true league MVP should again be Connor McDavid. The Oilers lack of secondary scoring is so acute, they probably would not have gotten 40 points without him.

But having said that, we call upon the words of Branch Rickey, who when he ran the Pittsburgh Pirates turned down a raise request by NL home run champion Ralph Kiner and traded him for a package on the logic that “we finished last with you, we can finish last without you.” McDavid, the league’s leading scorer and arguably best player this season, is not going to be the recipient of a second-consecutive Hart for a good reason. “Most valuable to his team,” the only criteria the NHL provides the voters, may not require the winner to be on a club that accomplished something, but certainly it is implied.

The distinction between a league’s best player and it’s most valuable is thinner than an Islander fan’s faith in Garth Snow. But the difference is real, both by definition and, historically, by practice. Never has any player whose team missed the playoffs been voted the MVP, no matter how heroic were his efforts for a loser. The vast majority of voters consistently have believed that’s the way it should be.

One supposes, the criteria could be more definitive but that not likely would yield any more worthy a winner. We can’t think of a terrible choice in a half-century. But that is not to suggest voters haven’t found well-accepted ways to disregard hugely valuable players.

The ability of goalies to standout has diminished in this era because there are so many more good ones that at any period in the past. But nobody would argue against goalkeeper still being the most critical position in the game. And, still, there have been only two netminders–Domink Hasek (twice) and Jose Theodore–who have won the Hart during the expansion era.

Also, since 1972 the only defenseman to be chosen was Chris Pronger in 2000. Nick Lidstrom, a seven-time Norris winner, was never the MVP in the league. This seems patently absurd until you look through the Hart winner in each of the years Lidstrom was a serious MVP candidate. Practically all of them are Hall of Famers or HHOFs to-be.

What is ridiculous is the logic by any voter that excludes defenseman and goalies from consideration just because those positions have their own awards. Voters apparently need a season where there was no clear-cut Hart choice among scorers to even consider the persons who keep the puck out of the net, even though they obviously are no less instrumental in the success of their teams than the offensive stars. Does the NHL need an annual Best Forward Award to even the playing field and get rid of such biases forever?

With two weeks to go in the regular season, the Hart conversation includes Nikita Kucherov, but not so much his teammate, Victor Hedman, the consensus leading Norris Trophy candidate. The Blue Jacket’s two most essential players are defenseman Seth Jones and goalie Sergei Bobrovsky. So good-bye to Columbus’ Hart hopes.

We do not have a ballot, but did for most of a quarter century and see nothing new in this era that would cause us to think differently about an MVP choice, unless an advanced statistic would cause a compelling argument for one player over another. Problem is, new stats or old stats, this year there is about as much separation between the top candidates as there is between Jacob Josefson trips to the IR.

We would vote for MacKinnon on a Monday, Kucherov on a Tuesday, Malkin on Wednesday, Taylor Hall and Claude Giroux on every Thursday and Friday, Hedman on Saturday and then, provided the polls were open on Sunday, Anze Kopitar. Since all are worthy, we would consult the final standings and send in our vote for MacKinnon a minute before the deadline, provided the Avalanche get in.

That is, unless we would change our mind in the final seconds. It’s that close. All the choices are that good.

Parity has come to the Hart race, too, not that this is anything new to Sidney Crosby, who has been great as always, and arguably better than ever. But come June the player of the post-lockout generation still will have only two Harts to his name, apparently because he has played his entire career on the same club as Malkin.

Malkin himself has won only one Hart. So by a definition that apparently is time-honored by the majority of voters, it is the star creating the largest gap between his importance and that of his team’s next best player who should be the Hart winner.

Is that fair to Malkin and Crosby? Of course not. But then having them on the same team has never seemed fair to the rest of the league either.

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