I agree Iginla was the best player in the NHL that year, but Theodore rightfully won the Hart trophy. There are a few points against Iginla:
Nothing against you in particular, but I see these same points argued in basically every thread that mentions either Iginla or the 2002 Hart, and I strongly object to all of them.
First, Iginla had a huge mid-season slump where he scored only 13 points in 23 games. He was tied for 143rd in scoring during that six week period. The Flames went 6-15-2. This effectively ended their playoff hopes.
So in the period where Iginla only scored at a very similar rate to the seasonal PPG of his team's best second liner, the Flames had a winning percentage that was worse than the worst team in the NHL. This somehow indicates Iginla was
not extremely valuable to a team that ended up with 79 points?
Or are you claiming that he was at fault for not scoring more in his team's losses? Because I don't think that's actually a fair criticism looking at the season overall:
Iginla's Production by Game Result, 2001-02:
In Calgary wins: 32 GP, 30-28-58, +33 (51% of team GF)
In Calgary ties: 12 GP, 8-6-14, +7 (44% of team GF)
In 1 goal losses*: 19 GP, 13-7-20, -1 (57% of team GF)
In losses by 2+: 19 GP, 1-3-4, -12 (19% of team GF)
(*-Not counting empty net goals in the score differential)
I don't see where he was letting down his team here. In addition to the mere 4 points that came in games where his team ended up losing by 2 or more, Iginla had only 4 points all season that came with his team already leading by 3 or more goals, meaning that a huge percentage of his offence came at critical times in hockey games. He also led the league in PPG in games won by his team (min. 25 GP), and completely carried the Flames' offence while also nearly breaking even in their one-goal losses.
If Iginla played for a better team, the distribution above would change and you could possibly argue his team may have been substantially better off with a few more 1 point nights at the expense of some of those 2 point games in wins. But that doesn't seem true for the Flames. During the 6-15-2 run, for example, if you arbitrarily add a goal from Iginla to every game in which he was held scoreless, he ends up with 26 points during that stretch (and 109 points on the season), but Calgary only improves to 7-12-4 and still misses the playoffs by 11 points.
Obviously it would have been nice if Iginla scored 8 additional hat tricks in 2-goal losses and thereby dragged his team into the postseason to be immediately bounced by the Red Wings, but I think it is pretty absurd to suggest he bears responsibility for Calgary not finishing higher in the standings. Take Iginla off of the Flames and they are easily a bottom-4 team in the league.
These results also indicate that if Calgary was supposedly focused on getting Iginla points rather than on winning hockey games (as has been suggested in this thread), then they did a very poor job considering how few points he actually scored in garbage time with his team losing. Even down the stretch, 22 of Iginla's final 32 points came in Calgary wins, of which only 2/9 would still have been victories if you erased all the goals he was involved in.
And there's evidence that Iginla was given an absurd amount of ice time to drive up his scoring totals. He played 25+ minutes in 16 games; 10 of these were in the last third of the season, when the Flames' season was already over.
During the month of March, the Flames lost Marc Savard, Clarke Wilm and Dave Lowry, their #5, #6 and #7 ranked forwards in ice time. So when a one-line team loses nearly all of its remaining effective veteran forward depth to injury after the trade deadline, what exactly do you think they should have done other than ride the guy leading the league in goals and points? If you were coaching the Flames would you seriously start giving major ice time to the likes of Blake Sloan and Blair Betts, or would you rely even more heavily on the only line that was doing anything at all for you offensively?
Calgary Goals Scored, Final 14 GP of 2001-02 season:
Jarome Iginla 9
Dean McAmmond 7
Craig Conroy 5
All Calgary D-men combined 4
All other Calgary forwards combined 9
It's interesting that the narrative is that the Flames must have been trying to pad Iginla's stats, when Vancouver was simultaneously also giving their best forward an equivalent amount of ice time offensively, even in the middle of a tight playoff race:
TOI, Final 14 GP of 2001-02 Season:
Bertuzzi: 17:04 ES, 5:42 PP
Iginla: 16:23 ES, 5:52 PP
Could it be that both teams were actually making optimal choices to try to win hockey games? Here's some further evidence that the answer is clearly yes: Neither of those two led in ice time among forwards during this period, Mike Modano did. Why? Just like Calgary, the Stars had suffered some key injuries to their second line (both Nieuwendyk and Langenbrunner were out), and the natural result was more ice time for their star player.
To me, either Iginla, Bertuzzi and Modano were all padding their stats with absurd ice time down the stretch, or none of them were and they were all just doing what was best for their teams.
He was pretty consistent in terms of shooting the puck in October through January - 3.2, 3.5, 3.3, and 3.7 shots per game, respectively. Then his shooting jumped up during the last three months - 4.4, 4.5, and 4.4 shots per game.
Except Iginla would go on to maintain a 4.2 shots per game rate while averaging 21:26 in TOI the following season, which makes me suspect this reflects a 24-year old emerging as an elite power forward in his breakout season rather than deliberate stat padding.
My takeaway from all this is Iginla spent the last third of the season playing tons of minutes and taking lots of shots, even though his team's fate had been sealed (due to the mid-year slump, which he contributed to). If the season ended in late February, when Naslund etc were within a few points of him, I'm not sure he'd have even been a Hart finalist.
Just a final point on Hart voting, on Feb. 27 the Habs were only 3 points ahead of Calgary in the standings, with the Flames having a game in hand. In other words, Montreal only made the playoffs by playing in the weaker Conference. Picking Theodore as the Hart winner is defensible based on his performance that year, but his team's playoff qualification shouldn't matter at all. The metrics seem to suggest Montreal and Calgary were about equally good and the difference between them was mostly strength of schedule.