Why Kucherov's Hart case is underrated

[Kamaya Painters]

1) You're bound to get overlooked in the NHL if you've won a prize like this previously. Especially if your rival is someone who's never won it and is someone the voters think should win it sometime in their career.

2) Bad PR. If you don't play to the unwritten rules (like pretending that you like being at the All-Star Game) you're already starting on minus.

3) He's Russian. Like it or not, this is a sport that mostly Canadian's care about..LOL

 

[Zegs2sendhelp]

Really makes you appreciate how overrated matthews is

 

[Roksta]

Meh the diff between the 3 is not big enough. The only thing that pops out when looking at your table is how Matthews shouldn't be in this discussion by 2000 miles

 

[T REX]

Getting into a smaller sample size but here are the numbers:

Auston Matthews
	GP	G	A	Pts	G/82	A/82	P/82
Vs Other	45	44	18	62	80	33	113
Vs Top 5 teams each conference	20	11	9	20	45	37	82
Total	65	55	27	82	69	34	103
Nathan MacKinnon
	GP	G	A	Pts	G/82	A/82	P/82
Vs Other	50	33	58	91	54	95	149
Vs Top 5 teams each conference	18	9	16	25	41	73	114
Total	68	42	74	116	51	89	140
Nikita Kucherov
	GP	G	A	Pts	G/82	A/82	P/82
Vs Other	43	19	47	66	36	90	126
Vs Top 5 teams each conference	23	21	27	48	75	96	171
Total	66	40	74	114	50	92	142
Connor McDavid
	GP	G	A	Pts	G/82	A/82	P/82
Vs Other	47	22	64	86	38	112	150
Vs Top 5 teams each conference	16	3	17	20	15	87	103
Total	63	25	81	106	33	105	138

Paints Kucherov in an even better light. Really poor splits for Matthews and especially McDavid.

Very impressive. He is carrying the team on his back. What's the % of being involved with his teams goals? I know it was high last time someone posted it. I hate when it's this close and we have to dissect the weirdest stats.

Thank you.

 

[leafsfan5]

The difference in production between him and 2nd place on his team is incredible. He's the entire offensive system for TB

#1 for Hart in my books as well

 

[tarheelhockey]

This seems like it could be explained by factors other than quality of play.

For example, say the Oilers keep McDavid and Draisaitl together against bottom-feeding opponents, and they tear it up with 3-4 points apiece due to playing against weak defense. But… against top-tier opponents, they split the stars and force the opponent to choose between line-matching against McDavid OR Draisaitl — and typically win with 3 points from Drai and 1 from McDavid due to that defensive focus going toward the better player. Does that make McDavid less valuable? Of course not, his team won the game because of the line-matching dilemma he created. Whereas Tampa might choose to stack their top line against elite opponents, relying on Kucherov/Stamkos/Point to collectively generate enough goals to overcome depth issues. At the end of the day Kucherov would likely have more points, but it doesn’t necessary lead to conclusions about anything other than deployment.

^^^ I just made this up, but it’s an illustration of how these stats can be interpreted different ways.

If we’re going to slice the numbers this finely, we really need to get down to that level of analysis to find out why they look the way they do.

 

[Muffin]

I'm confused? Do points matter less against lesser team or something? Are wins against them only worth 1 point instead of 2?

 

[Midnight Judges]

I don’t get why this matters other than being interesting.

You can make the argument that making sure you pick up the points you’re supposed to is more important.

If you want to go down the ‘importance’ route, then knocking down teams in your own division might do the most good for the team.

It’s also potentially more unfair because not all divisions are equal.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

Not sure it matters if two guys have the same amount of points and one does better against good teams it's fair to ask why he does worse against bad teams.

 

[DFC]

Kucherov's case is mainly how bad TB has been this year. They have been forced to outscore their problems, and pretty much all offense has run through him. The only top scorer on the team whose numbers wouldnt be drastically worse without Kucherov this year is Brandon Hagel.

 

[BKarchitect]

I mean if we are going to award more stature to “points against good teams” - let’s just give extra points for “clutch” goals or game winning goals. Maybe 1.5 for a point against a team with a +.633 record while it is your team’s second night of a back to back and maybe only .3333333 points for a goal against a third string goalie. But what if it’s a good team playing its backup? How many points is that worth? Have we picked apart what injuries each team had in each game?

This may be relevant if the guys he’s going against had all time dog choking records in high leverage situations…as it is, it’s a cute statistical factoid and that’s it.

Kucherov’s case is right up there with anybody’s but it ain’t based on these micro stats.

 

[El Travo]

So this only accounts for current top teams and not where teams were placed at the time the game was played? Edmonton at the beginning of the season was in complete freefall until they turned it around. Are the points gathered against them at the beginning of the year equal to points obtained now?

What about against teams who started out burning down villages and then tailed off to a non-Playoff spot?

 

[PAZ]

The biggest thing that will hurt Kucherov is that he already won. Since Hasek won his second Hart in 1997-98 the only players to win more than one Hart were

Ovechkin (08, 09, 13)
McDavid (17, 21, 23)
Crosby (07, 14)

So only three players in a 26 year period (25 seasons).

Hart voters are hesitant to give someone multiple Harts, even if they put up a Hart worthy season (Jagr 00, Jagr 06, Ovechkin 10, McDavid 18, McDavid 22).

That there are three key forwards gunning for the Hart this year, and only one hasn't won one is a pretty strong lean.

Compare that to the Pearson. Jagr won 3 times, Crosby won 3 times, Ovechkin won 3 times. McDavid won 4 times. Players are much more likely to award someone on repeat.

I agree the biggest detriment he has against him that he's already won.

But I think it's less to do with voters hesitant to give someone multiple Harts and more so that other players are due/deserve it.

 

[Yepthatsme]

Tampa has more depth, though. 5 players at 60 points or more...

Still, it's true that Tampa has benefited more from Kucherov, so you could say he deserves MVP. In honesty, the Avalanche would likely be in a playoff spot even without MacKinnon. Tampa would be who knows where without Kucherov.


Yeah, I bet he would have 2.5 points per game if he put in the effort, right?

Also consider though the 3 others have much more elite running mates having better seasons than Point (no slander against Point, I love the player but he’s having a weird year).

Kucherov with 114 points
Then Point with 73 is the next best

MacKinnon with 116
Rantanen with 90

McDavid with 106
Draisaitl with 86

Matthews with 82
Nylander actually has more with 87, but Marner is at 76

The other 3 have much more help with their running mates than Kucherov does this year. Especially considering McDavid has spent 50% of his ice time (all strengths) with Drai, Mackinnon 87% of his time with Rantanen, and Matthews 90% of his time with one of Nylander or Marner.

Still think Mackinnon should win, partly because of my bias of him being my favourite active player, but the argument on who has the most help certainly isn’t Kucherov for this year alone.

 

[Soul Assumption]

Not sure it matters if two guys have the same amount of points and one does better against good teams it's fair to ask why he does worse against bad teams.

Because he doesn't play 100% against bad teams, because Tampa will beat them even without his points. Colorado and Edmonton will obviously also beat bottom teams without Mackinnon and McDavid, but greedy Canadians are busting their ass because they care much more about individual stats than Kuch.

#KuchForHart

 

[TheGoldenJet]

It’s MacKinnon’s Hart to lose this year.

Kucherov is racking up EN points, which let’s face it, any player can do if given enough opportunities.

 

[RANDOMH3RO]

The hart will basically come down to who wins the Art Ross. Kuck and mackinnon are the clear favourites, but it’ll come down to who actually finishes stronger. Anything else about teammates and who they’re scoring against is irrelevant to me. Hart winners also lead a statistical category like 95% of the time. Although mackinnon perpetually being a strong candidate but failing to cement himself as the clear cut favourite so often may help him with votes because it’s seen as “his year” to deserve it.

 

[HFpapi]

The difference in production between him and 2nd place on his team is incredible. He's the entire offensive system for TB

#1 for Hart in my books as well

I mean, Tampa might end up with four 30 goal scorers and 5 players with 75+ points. Not exactly working with scrubs.

 

[wetcoast]

So, Kucherov competes against bad teams the way he competes in the skills competition. Doesn’t sound very MVP worthy. If he put forth some effort in those games, Tampa would be comfortably in a playoff position rather than just hanging on.

The 2 sides to every coin argument but I kind of agree sometimes micro analyzing just isn't very helpfull.

Everyone knows that Kuch bring offense but he also has played with 3 other guys almost exclusively as well.

The Hart is Mack's to lose, in part because he hasn't won one yet and that's the reality whether people like it or not.

also people tend to over rate offense above everything else in these things, it's not like Kuch is blowing away the competition in the Art Ross or anything.

 

[TatteredTornNFrayed]

Drawing a hard line between results vs. teams in range of ~10-20th in the league at one particular point in the season is rather random, especially considering those playoff teams may continue to change, and haven't been playing the same all season. And considering the sample sizes, the overall scoring data itself likely has a fair bit of randomness as well.

Plus, as others have discussed, the rationale for this being a positive/negative thing is far from definite.