Hall For Hart
Every season, the National Hockey League hands out the Hart Memorial Trophy to a player who is deemed by the hockey writers to be the league's Most Valuable Player. This year’s race is sure to be a tight one with many familiar faces in the conversation.
Joining the conversation are the likes of Evgeni Malkin of the Pittsburgh Penguins, three time winner Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals, superstar Nikita Kucherov of the Tampa Bay Lightning, Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche. But there is one player who should be heads and shoulders above them all: New Jersey Devils superstar Taylor Hall.
In his second season in New Jersey, after coming over in a now infamous one for one trade from the Edmonton Oilers in 2016, Hall has put up astonishing numbers so far. Hall has 76 points, 31 goals, 45 assists in 65 games played this season as his basic stats. If you dig deeper, Hall has the largest point differential between himself and another teammate in the league, and it's not even close. His closet teammate in points is Nico Hischier, number one overall pick of this past year's draft, who has 45 points. The point difference between them is 31, which is by far the biggest gap in points between teammates in the entire league.
Hall also had a stretch of 26 games straight, in which he recorded at least a point, which spanned from December 30th, 2017, until March 8th. 2018. During this point streak the record of the team was 12-13-1, which doesn't sound great. But if you take out all the goals when Hall was involved (which is over 70%), the record of the team would look much much worse. If you took away all goals that Hall was involved in and added in ties for overtime decisions, the record of the team would be 4-18-4 (research done by PucksandPitchforks.com ).
Further, over his 26 game point streak, Hall missed three games due to injury. And the team lost all three of those games and were shut out twice (being held without a goal). Despite all of these stats and accolades, Hall has just recently joined the conversation and he joins a crowded field with supposedly a very similar case for the trophy out in Colorado.
Nathan MacKinnon, in his 5th season with the Avalanche, has 33 goals, 49 assists and 82 points in 61 games played this season. MacKinnon has more points than Hall in less games played. However, MacKinnon’s closest teammate in points has 70 points, which is 25 more points then Hall’s closest teammate. MacKinnon has more established players and scoring outside of him, with a better goaltender, and yet his team is still a bubble team fighting for their chance. The stories of MacKinnon and Hall are similar, but MacKinnon has been getting more recognition, which to me is absurd given the stats and circumstance
All of the other top candidates (Ovechkin, Kucherov, Malkin etc) all have more points then Hall. All of their teams are near the top in their divisions in points, and are playing on juggernauts of teams who have other superstars playing alongside them. For Ovechkin, he has Nicklas Backstrom and Braden Holtby. For Kucherov, he has Steven Stamkos and Andrei Vasilevsky, on the best team in the league. Malkin has the best player of the generation on his team, in Sidney Crosby and another 70+ point scorer in Phil Kessel on the 2 time defending champs. Yet Hall has only a 19 year old rookie as his second leading points scorer.
It's not all about who has the most points. It shouldn't be about who has the most points. That is what the Art Ross Trophy is for. The Hart Trophy, is about who is the most valuable player to his team, which I believe is Hall. Hall should be a Hart finalist and a serious threat to take home the award.
