Weekend Takeaways: Hart Trophy still up for grabs in final two weeks of season

With about 10 days to go in the NHL season, we’re experiencing the rare Hart Trophy race where it feels like a half-dozen guys still have a shot at being named MVP. And, really, that number might even be seven players if a certain, recently crowned all-time goal-scoring king didn’t miss a month with a broken leg.

Setting Alex Ovechkin — already a three-time Hart winner — aside for now, the six players who still have a chance at this thing are the Colorado duo of Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, injured Leon Draisaitl in Edmonton, Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov, the Vegas Golden Knights’ Jack Eichel and our heavily padded entry, Connor Hellebuyck of the Jets.

While none of those players had much of a weekend to speak of, each of them has a well-established case for the Hart, with the opportunity to put a fine point on it with a big push over the finish line. And just as every player is bringing a little something different to the table, a Hart win would shape the way we talk about each guy in distinct ways.

Start at the top of the scoring charts, with MacKinnon. He finally got his due last year with his first Hart win, and if the 29-year-old were to claim back-to-back MVPs, he’d be in a truly rarified tier of superstar, especially among players who’ve skated in the past 35 years. Put it this way, here’s a short list of studs who never won the Hart in consecutive years: Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid and literally everybody else playing right now save Ovechkin.

Sticking with the Avs, Makar has already accomplished something no other defenceman has done for more than 15 years — net 30 goals in a season — and an MVP win by him would be the first by a blue-liner since Chris Pronger claimed the award 25 years ago. In a league that contains mega-talents like Quinn Hughes, Adam Fox and Victor Hedman on the back end, a Hart Trophy victory would give Makar an unimpeachable claim to being the best defenceman in the world right now.

Hellebuyck’s Vezina Trophy 12 months ago — with another likely to follow this season — has already cemented his reputation as the best puckstopper on Earth. However, if he can claim a league MVP, it would put Hellebuyck on that Carey Price level from 2015, where he’s not only being talked about as the best goalie in the game but one of the best players, period.

That should be the way we always talk about Kucherov, but sometimes it still feels like the Bolts scoring whiz — and defending Art Ross winner — gets a short shrift. Maybe some of that is still rooted in the fact he was the 58th-overall pick in 2011 as opposed to a high lottery selection or because — while his team has had incredible success — he still toils in a non-traditional hockey market. Perhaps it’s because he’s exclusively a winger and that’s the one position in hockey that gets less shine than the other three in terms of perceived value to the club. Whatever the case, if Kucherov wins a second career Hart one year after finishing runner-up to MacKinnon, we need to pass a law requiring his name to come up in the early stages of any conversation about the world’s premier players.

Speaking of which, that somewhat nebulous designation still sits with a guy who — when he’s not injured — wears No. 97 for the Oilers. In all likelihood, there’s nothing Draisaitl — currently out with what’s being called a short-term, lower-body ailment — could do to change the outside perspective that he’s Robin to Connor McDavid’s Batman in Northern Alberta. Still, a second career Hart in the same year he’s going to win his first Rocket Richard Trophy no matter how many more games he does or doesn’t play would certainly help remind people that it’s really an all-time two-man show in Edmonton.

That leaves Eichel, who probably has the fringiest case of the six guys we’ve touched on, especially since he’s gone a bit cold with zero points in his past four outings. Still, we’re talking about a two-way, top-line centre who sits sixth in league scoring. Eichel’s real coming-out party was, of course, leading the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs in scoring en route to winning the title in Vegas. A 2025 Hart Trophy, though, would further validate this guy’s high-end ability after years and years where it felt like — specifically during the Buffalo tenure of his career — the conversation around Eichel seemed to focus on what was going wrong as opposed to what was going right.

That brings us to a guy who most definitely did have himself a big weekend. With two goals on Friday and the historic one to get to 895 on Sunday, Ovechkin is up to 42 tallies in 61 outings this year. That projects to a 57-goal showing in 82 games, which means without a five-week absence due to a broken leg sustained in November, this guy could have taken a rip at a 60-goal season at age thirty-freakin’-nine!

That certainly would have been good enough to garner some Hart consideration. As it stands, there are six other guys who — with very little time to go — still have their helmet in the MVP ring.

Weekend Takeaways

• There’s no getting away from a team that’s won 12 straight games and no getting around the fact that Robert Thomas is one of the most dangerous offensive players in hockey right now. The St. Louis Blues beat Colorado 5-4 on Saturday to establish a new franchise mark of a dozen consecutive Ws. Thomas had a four-point showing that night and is up to an incredible 19 points in his past eight games. Since March 15, when the Blues’ winning run began, Thomas leads the NHL with 23 points in 12 outings.

• While Thomas’s production is an example of a great player on a winning team going off, it’s hard to know exactly what to make of Morgan Geekie’s offensive showing with the scuffling Boston Bruins. The Bruins’ lone win in their past 12 games occurred Saturday versus Carolina, where Geekie was in on every single Boston goal during a 5-1 trouncing of the Hurricanes. While that 1-4-5 outburst was something, it’s far from a one-off for Geekie. The 26-year-old — who nearly doubled his previous best to set a new career high of 17 goals last season — has seven goals and 16 points in his past 10 outings and sits one tally away from hitting the 30-goal mark. With so many bodies having gone out the door in Boston, Geekie is seeing lots of ice time on the top line and is doing a fantastic job of resume-building ahead of becoming a restricted free agent this summer on a re-tooling team.

The Week Ahead

• The Red Wings had two big wins on the weekend and, realistically, require a 60-minute victory in Montreal on Tuesday to remain relevant in the Eastern Conference playoff picture.

• The Leafs are in Tampa Bay on Wednesday and any kind of Toronto win would likely serve as the knockout blow in terms of the Buds claiming top spot in the Atlantic over the Bolts.

• Chicago visits Boston on Thursday, meaning a Hawks squad that drafted first overall in 2023 will be facing a team that suddenly has to be dreaming of some lottery luck in 2025. At the moment, the B’s have the best lottery odds of any team in the East — meaning, of course, they’re the worst outfit in the conference — and have the fourth-best chance league-wide of getting that top pick. The last time Boston called the first name in the draft, it was Joe Thornton who strolled up to the stage nearly 30 years ago in 1997.

• The Frozen Four is set to go off Thursday in St. Louis, with the final set for Saturday night. Your participants are Western Michigan, Boston University, Penn State and the defending national champs, Denver.

• If Calgary can win games in San Jose and Anaheim earlier in the week, then Friday’s home game versus the Wild just might mean something in the Western Conference wild-card standings.

• The 2025 Women’s World Championship begins on Wednesday in Czechia, with Canada and Team USA slated to wage a round-robin battle on Sunday at 1 p.m. ET.

Red and White Power Rankings

1. Winnipeg Jets (52-21-4) The Jets’ next win will be their 53rd of the campaign and establish a new franchise record. Winnipeg won 52 both last season and in 2017-18. The Jets 1.0 never won more than 43 games but played in an era where games finished in ties.

2. Toronto Maple Leafs (47-25-4) After blanking the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday, Anthony Stolarz has the best save percentage (.924) of any goalie in the league who’s played at least 50 games since the start of last season.

3. Edmonton Oilers (44-27-5) Even if it was only for about seven minutes, it was good to see deadline pickup Trent Frederic get his first action as an Oiler during a 3-0 loss in L.A. on Saturday. Now he’s got a handful of games to get himself up to speed ahead of the playoffs.

4. Ottawa Senators (42-29-6) The suddenly stingy Sens posted back-to-back shutout wins on the weekend over Florida and Columbus. Ottawa has allowed one or fewer goals in regulation time in four of its past five contests.

5. Montreal Canadiens (38-30-9) The Canadiens didn’t have much in the tank on Sunday night in the second half of back-to-back games, but they managed to scrape up a massive pair of points in Nashville with a 2-1 victory. The goals came on great shots by their two best shooters, Cole Caufield and Patrik Laine. The latter has 20 goals in just 47 contests this year, while Caufield has 36 now and stands an outside shot at hitting the 40-goal barrier with five games to go.        

6. Calgary Flames (36-27-13) It could make for a tantalizing end to the season for Flames fans if the club brings in highly touted defence prospect Zayne Parekh now that his major junior season is over. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman believes that’s the plan.

7. Vancouver Canucks (35-28-13) Barring an absolute miracle finish, this year will mark the eighth time in the past 10 82-game seasons that Vancouver will finish outside the playoffs.

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