Sean Maloughney: The Hart Trophy Is Dumb The Hart Trophy is dumb and I have changes.

Great article!

Think this is why more and more players prefer the Ted Lindsay. Plus it's voting on by the NHLPA and not media guys, which in itself becomes quite bias when certain Cities have a lot more members than others.

isn't this kind of the point of this reward, was to distinguish between, highest point total, best d-man, and highest save %, and any player possibly missed by those objective categories? Like why do we even give rewards to players that get the most points? we know who got the most, it seems extremely redundant to give them an award that says they got the most. At least this reward sparks conversation.

Good blog. Why not just make it Most Outstanding player. That way we don't have to compare apples and oranges and penalize players because they have a good GM, good or inept linemates, etc.

A whole article about the Hart and not a peep about Igor (frank)ing Shesterkin?

You disgust me.

Half the voters don’t really follow the game. They wait to see which way the wind is blowing and they go that way. Imo you could give McDavid the Hart every year and not get much argument.

A whole article about the Hart and not a peep about Igor (frank)ing Shesterkin?

You disgust me.
- MaximumBone

If I had a vote for the Hart Trophy as it is today Shesterkin get's my first place vote. This blog is less about who should win the Hart and more about the discourse around the award.

The Taylor Hall win was particularly galling. Giroux was the MVP that year. He had 102 points that year. It was the ONLY season he hit 100 pts. McDavid had a few more. Flyers needed a win the last game against the Rangers to make the playoffs. Devils didn't make the playoffs. G had a hat trick in that game. Put him over 100 pts, put him over 30 goals, Flyers made the playoffs. He had his best season ever. Hall did none of that. Being the best of the worst should not be considered. Hall was so valuable that 2 seasons after getting the 1st overall pick the Devils picked first and got Hughes. Hall is gone the team is better. Hall was really valuable. LOL...SMH!!

They should just eliminate it. The others are achievement based for the most part. Most goals, most points, lowest goal against, best D-man (most points 99% of the time), etc. It's the regular season version of the Conn Smythe.

The most annoying part of this and Selke is that they are rules by Eastern media. Bergeron is the only one that wins the Selke. How many of these voters actually watch western teams? They are reputation based awards. Only an Eastern player or one with enough U-tube reels ever get serious consideration.

The Taylor Hall win was particularly galling. Giroux was the MVP that year. He had 102 points that year. It was the ONLY season he hit 100 pts. McDavid had a few more. Flyers needed a win the last game against the Rangers to make the playoffs. Devils didn't make the playoffs. G had a hat trick in that game. Put him over 100 pts, put him over 30 goals, Flyers made the playoffs. He had his best season ever. Hall did none of that. Being the best of the worst should not be considered. Hall was so valuable that 2 seasons after getting the 1st overall pick the Devils picked first and got Hughes. Hall is gone the team is better. Hall was really valuable. LOL...SMH!!
- jaws1955

Well this is just a collection of babble but I'll do my best to decipher it. Devils did make the playoffs that season. Hall scored 39 goals that season to Giroux's 34. Giroux also had an 85 point Voracek on his roster and a 76 point Sean Couturier. Hall missed most of the following season due to injury. Since then and trading him the Devils have finished 29th, 26th, 29th, and are currently 29th again.

A writer last year didn’t pick Bergeron for selke because “he isn’t the only two way player in the league”. Logic like this is why player value the Lindsay over Hart.
Most sports writers have a bias or are just lazy. Lately, a lot seem to spend more time preaching politics then researching the players they are paid to cover.

A whole article about the Hart and not a peep about Igor (frank)ing Shesterkin?

You disgust me.
- MaximumBone

And Claude Giroux should have won the award over Hall and he didn't even finish in the top 3 of voting.....

If I had a vote for the Hart Trophy as it is today Shesterkin get's my first place vote. This blog is less about who should win the Hart and more about the discourse around the award.
- freelancer

I think that's all the more reason to mention the goalie that's actually worthy and, in my limited exposure to hockey media, seems to be being overlooked in the discussion that seems largely centered around McDavid and Matthews. He demonstrates the precise point your revision is aiming to emphasize: league-leading, elite numbers across the board behind a pretty porous team defense.

Maybe my perception is skewed due to the small amount of hockey media I consume, though.

I agree that your revision would make it more interesting, though.

Wayne Greztky once said (and I'm paraphrasing) that if the Hart truly went to the player most valuable to his team, Arturs Irbe should have won it in 1994. Irbe gained 1 3rd place vote.

The only position that you didn’t mention goaltenders are arguably the easiest to justify for the Hart. The basic criteria is a Vezina finalist season with a team in the playoff hunt that would be finishing bottom 5 without them. To be honest though a player shouldn’t even be considered for the Hart if their team isn’t in playoff contention. Find a guy that’s putting a crap team on his back and dragging them to the playoffs and that’s your Hart candidates. From there it’s easy to go subjective because in the eyes of the fans the most important player on their team should win it except in rare cases where a player has separated himself so far ahead of his peers not just on his team but around the league that it would be impossible to pick anyone else.

The "to his team" part of the award definition has always struck me as superfluous and should be abolished.

The idea that we're picking the winner of the Hart Trophy, literally the most prestigious individual award in the entire NHL, based less on "who is actually the best player" and more on "which top-5-ish player has the crappiest teammates" is absolutely bananas.

It's an individual award for the most valuable player. It's the highest individual honor a player can earn. It should be decided based on the absolute value that the player provides, regardless of how good or bad the rest of his team is without him.

A $1 million diamond is worth $1 million regardless of whether it's owned by me or Jeff Bezos. Either way it increases the net worth of its owner by precisely $1 million.

A superstar player who performs at a 4+ wins above replacement level is going to be worth 4+ wins "to his team" whether his team is still stacked even without him, or if his team probably misses the playoffs without him, or his team misses the playoffs even with him.

If you think there ought to be an award for "really great but not necessarily the best NHL player who stood out the most compared to the teammates he happened to play with" that's fine. But it shouldn't be the Hart, which is historically the most important individual trophy in the entire league.

This has always bothered me as well. The wording has always led to confusion and needless debates and players getting snubbed.If it is kept as it is now then basically there is no award for the most outstanding player in the league. That's just dumb. You could argue all day about who is more valuable to their team. That's what each team does when they award an MVP for that year. The Hart Trophy should be given to the most outstanding player for that season. Lemieux got robbed of the award in 1989 because the writers used that wording to give it to the guy they liked better: Gretzky. Mario put up 85 GOALS AND 199 POINTS na didn't win the Hart. Joke.

NIce article, I am one to be on board that the Hart winner needs to be on a winning team in which if he wasnt on the team the team would be dead last.
Growing up in Buffalo the Sabres without Hasek would be the worst team in the league.
As much as I dont like him with all the injuries that the Penguins had Crosby kept them afloat and will finish over 80 points.

IM sure im wrong but thats my thinking on the award.

I think if you're going by the most valuable to their team definition, I think the only ones in the conversation are Matthews, Gaudreau, and Josi. All three of those teams are nothing without them.

I won't include Shesterkin because I think it's silly to give the award to a goalie. Goalies are the teams' MVPs by default. Yeah, I'm still bitter about Theodore winning.

If you can't decide who the MVP of the Oilers is, neither of them can be the singular MVP of the league.

Just like everything else with society these days, people have far too much time on their hands to analyze and over analyze the semantics of every little thing.

Sure, it could be written more like "to the player VOTED most valuable player in the league".

It's the "...to his team" part that keeps throwing people, and some years they actually get hung up on this phrase and give it to a guy that is clearly not the best player in the league that year, but his team sucks and he was great (even though perhaps 7 other players were better. lol

Gretzky got 215pts in 85-86 but his whole team was great, meanwhile Dale Hawerchuk got 105pts on a terrible Winnipeg team with the 2nd scorer getting only 69pts...Hawerchuk was robbed I guess! lol

I do agree that they could perhaps change the wording, but most people regard the winner as the "best player in the league that year".

The Hall MVP, and Draisaitl MVP wins were jokes. Not when McDavid is in the same league (same team!!!). McDavid deserved the award the year Drai got it, both for the best in the league AND for best on his team.

The Hall year....Matthews, McDavid, Draisatil, McKinnon, Kucherov, Girioux, Malkin, Ovechkin, etc. etc. etc. So many better choices that year (and I like Taylor Hall a lot!)

Sorry for the rant but I get tired of people constantly trying to bring down the guys who clearly put in the work and deserve the #1 spot, but people these days feel the need to poke holes in the best...it's all about jealousy and it never happened 20yrs ago.

The "to his team" part of the award definition has always struck me as superfluous and should be abolished.

The idea that we're picking the winner of the Hart Trophy, literally the most prestigious individual award in the entire NHL, based less on "who is actually the best player" and more on "which top-5-ish player has the crappiest teammates" is absolutely bananas.

It's an individual award for the most valuable player. It's the highest individual honor a player can earn. It should be decided based on the absolute value that the player provides, regardless of how good or bad the rest of his team is without him.

A $1 million diamond is worth $1 million regardless of whether it's owned by me or Jeff Bezos. Either way it increases the net worth of its owner by precisely $1 million.

A superstar player who performs at a 4+ wins above replacement level is going to be worth 4+ wins "to his team" whether his team is still stacked even without him, or if his team probably misses the playoffs without him, or his team misses the playoffs even with him.

If you think there ought to be an award for "really great but not necessarily the best NHL player who stood out the most compared to the teammates he happened to play with" that's fine. But it shouldn't be the Hart, which is historically the most important individual trophy in the entire league.
- Sven22

WHat a great analysis, bang on. I agree 100%