The Hart Trophy race this year is one of the most closely contested in recent memory. After a hat trick against Minnesota on Tuesday, Nathan MacKinnon seems to have captured the late-season momentum. But Auston Matthews leads the league in goals with 13 more than the next closest player, Connor McDavid has overcome a slow start to reach 130 points and might become just the fourth player ever with 100 assists in a season, and Nikita Kucherov leads the Art Ross race and has a chance at a 100 assist season too. Add in an impressive season by Quinn Hughes leading all defensemen in scoring and placing the Canucks at the top of the Pacific division and another outstanding season from Connor Hellebuyck, and the field is already overcrowded without even mentioning outside candidates like Artemi Panarin or Sidney Crosby.
However, I think MacKinnon deserves his late-season favorite status and should win the award. What’s more, I don’t believe this is as close as the commentary around the race suggests. For this article, I’m basing my analysis on Evolving-Hockey’s Wins Above Replacement model. From their original write-up, the goal of their model is explicitly to be descriptive. For this reason, I prefer their standard WAR over their xWAR model, which is intended to have more predictive power. The Hart is supposed to be for the player that provides the most value and WAR attempts to measure how much value a player provided for a season. Of course, all the regular caveats about single-number metrics and model limitations apply, but I think this is the best jumping-off point of the available public models.
Furthermore, in this article, I will only look at the four main forwards (MacKinnon, Matthews, McDavid, Kucherov) up for consideration, plus Quinn Hughes. I am excluding Hellebuyck because I want to look at this season’s goalies in a later article, but I don’t think this has been a Hart-winning season for him.
All data is from Evolving-Hockey.com as of April 9.
By WAR, MacKinnon leads the group with 6 WAR, followed by Matthews at 5.3, McDavid at 5, Hughes at 4.1, and Kucherov at 3.9. So that’s easy, MacKinnon has the most WAR, therefore he provided the most value. Case closed!
Of course, it’s well-documented that MacKinnon has been played significantly more than every other forward in the league except his linemate Mikko Rantanen. WAR is a counting stat, so his lead may be due to the extra playing time while other players are more efficient. Looking at WAR per 60 minutes, however, MacKinnon still stands out from the rest of the pack.
First, I think it’s fair to say that Kucherov doesn’t belong in the discussion with the other three forwards. Although he’s played more minutes than Matthews and McDavid, his rate of production is much lower in just about 50 more minutes played.
More importantly, no player with a significant number of minutes played has produced wins at a higher rate than MacKinnon this season. Furthermore, no other forward has played more minutes than he has. No forward has ever finished with both the most minutes played and the highest WAR/60 in the league. Connor McDavid came closest in 2020-21, finishing first in WAR/60 and third in total time on ice. Anze Kopitar also came close in 2015-16 finishing first in time on ice and fourth in WAR/60. Of course, there are still three games left to play, and Matthews and McDavid are barely behind MacKinnon in WAR/60 and could pass him in the last three games of the season. Even if that happens though, MacKinnon will still finish with by far the most efficient season ever for the ice-time leader.
Looking at this year’s contenders compared to other top forward seasons, MacKinnon stands out even more. Here I limited forwards to seasons with at least 1,600 minutes played, mainly to make the chart more readable. This excludes some seasons that were more efficient than MacKinnon this year, but in several hundred fewer minutes played.
No player has ever played more minutes than MacKinnon had been more efficient. Only two players above our cutoff have a higher WAR/60: McDavid in 2016-17, when he won the Hart with 96% of the vote, and Pavel Datsyuk in 2007-08 when he lost to Ovechkin’s 65-goal season.1 However, MacKinnon has been very fortunate to be healthy this year and hasn’t missed a game yet. If we look at the same chart but use TOI per game, we can compare him to players who may have been relied on just an much when healthy but were limited by injuries. For this chart, I also included all previous Hart winners to compare with lockout and COVID-shortened seasons.
By including Hart winners, we add Taylor Halls’s 2017-18 season, McDavid’s 2020-21 season, and Matthew’s 2021-22 season, all of which were more efficient than MacKinnon this year, but failed to reach our 1,600-minute cutoff. Once again, no other player has ever played as many minutes per game and been as efficient as MacKinnon this year. If anything, MacKinnon looks even more impressive; the closest seasons to his are all Hart-winning seasons. Furthermore, of the more efficient seasons available, every other player has won the Hart except Datsyuk. Matthews and McDavid are having tremendous years, but MacKinnon has been exceptional.
One criticism of MacKinnon’s case is that he spends most of his time with Rantanen. However, all of these players have played significant minutes with strong supporting casts. Matthews has spent most of his time this season with Marner or Nylander. McDavid and Hyman have been inseparable and he’s played significant time with Draisaitl as well. Kucherov and Brayden Point have been stapled to each other all season long. Most of these linemates produce at roughly the same rate (0.9-1 WAR/60), so I don’t think MacKinnon has had a significantly easier time because of who he plays with. What’s more, WAR already attempts to account for quality teammates and linemates. It may not be perfect but all these players have played with other good players.
Lastly, there was another player highlighted on the first chart who I haven’t discussed yet: Quinn Hughes. Similar to MacKinnon, Hughes leads all defensemen in WAR/60, while also playing nearly the most minutes in the league. No player with more minutes played is particularly close to matching Hughes’s efficiency. However, when we put Hughes in context with other top defenseman seasons, he does not come out looking as impressive as MacKinnon.
Hughes has been fantastic, but he’s hovering at the edge of the pack rather than breaking away from it. While he’s having one of the most efficient seasons ever for a defenseman, others were better. And none of those defensemen were even nominated for the Hart, much less won. This may reflect voter bias more than who was most deserving, but also reflects the fact that defensemen generally don’t produce as much value as forwards, just by the nature of the position. For completeness, I also included the same chart using TOI per game.
Again, Hughes is having an extremely impressive season. However, it’s not a record-setting season the way MacKinnon’s is. He should win the Norris in a walk, but the Hart is a reach too far. It will likely take a truly exceptional season for a defenseman to win the award, and that’s not Hughes this year.
MacKinnon is doing something this season we have never seen before. No other player has played as much as him and maintained their production. Matthews and McDavid come close to matching his efficiency, but in far fewer minutes, while Kucherov is close to playing as many minutes, but far less productive in them. Hughes is having an outstanding season as the top defenseman this year, but not at the level required to win the Hart. MacKinnon seems to have emerged as the favorite, and rightfully so.
I also think there are some issues with comparing WAR from 2007-08 and 2008-09 to later seasons because the play-by-play from those seasons is more error-prone. Datsyuk was probably the most valuable player that year, but I’m not sure he actually produced 7.4 WAR, 1.1 more than the next closest ever.
Great article!