The NHL regular season is coming to a close, and the playoffs are here.
As the league turns its attention to the playoffs, another topic of discussion is bound to be the NHL Awards Show set for June.
This was the most exciting NHL regular season in recent memory, with dominant teams, a hectic player race, and some fantastic individual efforts defining the 2023-2024 season.
The Hart Trophy race for the league's Most Valuable Player always invites a ton of interesting discourse about what the true meaning of most valuable really is.
Is it just the best player? Is it the best player whose team would be the worst if he disappeared? Is it the best player on the worst team who made the playoffs? While those questions are unanswerable, here are the top three contenders for this year's Hart Trophy.
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1. Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado Avalanche
It was yet another fantastic season for Nate the Great, who has carried the Avalanche on his back in the absence of captain Gabriel Landeskog and with a decreasingly stacked supporting cast around him.
Until the trade deadline, it was easy to look at the Avs and see a one-line, one-pairing team with a bunch of superstars making up a top heavy roster.
Now, with some key additions like Sean Walker and Casey Mittelstadt, things are more balanced, but that doesn't make MacKinnon's efforts to keep this team near the top any less valuable.
He plays a premium position, is a one-man power play, can create a high-danger scoring chance at the drop of a hat, and crushed his already lofty career highs in all offensive categories.
What's not to like?
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2. Nikita Kucherov, Tampa Bay Lightning
The Lightning are not the total juggernaut that they were when they won the 2020 and 2021 Stanley Cups, and a first-round exit last postseason had many wondering if the Bolts were done as a premier franchise in the league.
Kucherov presumably heard such chatter, and he has spent the entire regular season telling everybody where they can shove it.
The Russian lifted his playmaking skill to a whole new level this year, and he flirted with the 50 goal mark to boot. Like MacKinnon, Kucherov is an instant offense on skates and single-handedly could make a unit of replacement level players dangerous on the power play.
MacKinnon gets the nod for the more difficult workload as a center and better even-strength result,, but Kucherov is an extremely deserving Hart winner in pretty much any other environment.
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3. Connor McDavid, Edmonton Oilers
The face of the NHL and the league's best player turned in another ridiculously strong season this year, even as he hasn't flexed his usual dominance in terms of production over the rest of the league.
The Oilers got off to a nightmarish start, but flirted with the NHL winning streak record thanks to some good goaltending and McDavid's constant excellence.
Goalscoring took a backseat to distribution this year, as McDavid topped the 100-assist mark for the first time and did not come close to his Rocket Richard-winning 64-goal mark from a season ago.
This nod could have gone to Auston Matthews, but McDavid's playmaking is so singular, his impact so constant, and his assists so much more "goal-like" than many other players' actual goals that I like him as the third nominee, even if the trophy is destined to go to MacKinnon or Kucherov.
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