Sometimes it looks like it’s Connor McDavid’s world and we’re just living in it. That’s also been the case this year with the Edmonton Oilers superstar laser-focused on driving his team to a third-straight Stanley Cup Final.
With the playoffs 10 games away, McDavid has been stacking up the numbers in the Hart Trophy conversation, especially with Leon Draisaitl nursing an injury. However, not everyone sees the Canadian maverick as the frontrunner in the Hart Trophy race.
NHL Hart Trophy Race: Why Connor McDavid’s No Longer the Favorite
McDavid’s been in sizzling form this year, there’s no debating that. Over 72 games so far, the Oilers captain has 40 goals and 78 assists, racking up 118 points in all.
In the most recent win over the Utah Mammoth, McDavid led the Oilers’ charge in the 5-2 win with two goals to his name, including a spectacular one off the bounce that was good enough for any highlight reel.
That said, Tampa Bay Lightning star Nikita Kucherov is more than holding his own against the Canadian. Kucherov’s blistering 120 points have been buttressing the Lightning’s late surge after a sluggish start. The Russian has 40 goals and 80 assists in 66 games so far, which means at the current rate, the only comparables for his rate of production are Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux.
McDavid, for all his talents, has just fallen behind the pack a little, trailing Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon in the race.
NHL writer Dan Rosen pointed to as much, naming Kucherov the undisputed frontrunner for the Hart Trophy, owing to the Russian forward “carrying the Tampa Bay Lightning.” When all is said and done, Kucherov could also end up winning the Art Ross Trophy as the leading scorer in the league.
But on the face of things, it doesn’t look like McDavid will mind all that much about missing out on the Hart Trophy if it spurs the Oilers on to even greater heights.
In a February piece with the Players’ Tribune, McDavid outlined how much winning a Stanley Cup in Edmonton means to him.
“All I want to do is win,” the Oilers captain wrote. “It’s all we think about in our room. It’s all we talk about in the offseason. It’s why I get up every morning. It’s why I’ve stayed in Edmonton for more than a decade.”
He also addressed the downside of the weight of those expectations. “I wanted to be the captain of the Edmonton Oilers. I wanted that pressure. No doubt. But I’d be lying if I said it came naturally to me, or that the weight of it wasn’t heavy.”
Having missed out on a gold medal in the Winter Olympics, McDavid will no doubt use the feeling of potentially missing out on the Hart Trophy to supercharge the Oilers’ pursuit of the elusive Stanley Cup.
“I just want to be in Edmonton, playing hockey. I want to get back there again, whatever it takes,” McDavid said in February. With 10 games to go and a potential matchup with the Vegas Golden Knights in store for the playoffs, McDavid will have more than the Hart Trophy in mind this time around.
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