But the point was, his offense disappeared during a crucial part of the season (games 29 through 51).
I understand that is your key criticism of Iginla's season, but I still don't see why it matters nearly as much as you are claiming.
First of all, streaks seem a bit arbitrary. Is 0-2-0-2-0-2-0-2 inherently better than 2-2-2-2-0-0-0-0? Points in game 1 are worth the same as points in game 29, 51 or 82.
Secondly, I definitely don't see that kind of slump as remotely disqualifying for anybody's Hart chances. In 2003-04 Martin St. Louis had a very similar stretch of 14 points in 24 games. This, however, is rarely remarked upon, and everybody treats St. Louis' Hart as fully deserved, probably because other players on the Lighting picked him up and carried the team to a record of 9-10-4-1 in those games.
My main counterargument is that your specific focus on Iginla's game 29-51 without considering similar examples from other players is effectively holding him to a completely different standard by not taking into account the historically low levels of secondary scoring from Iginla's teammates that season.
I think your point is the Flames were so bad, it wouldn't have made much of a difference if Iginla scored more during that stretch. I'm not sure I agree. During that cold stretch, he was scoreless in 15 out of 23 games. The Flames were 6-15-2 overall during those 23 games (and 3-11-1 in the fifteen where he was held scoreless). Sure, some of them would have been lost anyway, even if Iginla got a point or two (such as a 6-1 loss to the Leafs or a 4-0 loss to St Louis). But there were three one-goal losses (excluding empty net goals), one tie, and two crucial losses against division rival Vancouver (both of which were two-goal losses, but only due to an insurance marker from the Canucks with less than 4 minutes left in both games).
The game log of every player ever is littered with games where one goal would have changed the result, sure. But if you are still going to argue that Iginla didn't produce enough in close losses, why were his numbers so strong in precisely that scenario throughout the year?
I posted splits by game result in my last post. To recap, in one goal losses he scored at a 56 goal pace per 82 games, accounting for 37% of his team's total goals scored. He also got a point on 57% of his team's offence and was just -1 despite his team being outscored 61-35, including 7 empty net goals against (and it's probably reasonable to assume Iginla was on the ice for all 7). If you think he should have scored another goal in 5-6 more games then OK, but that means you are blaming him for not scoring at a goal-per-game pace and not individually accounting for nearly half of his team's goals in those key contests (and even that on its own wouldn't have been enough to get the Flames even close to the playoffs).
If you want to know what it looks like when a player maybe should be criticized for not doing enough in his team's close losses, let's go back to our previous Hart Trophy comparable:
Martin St. Louis, 2003-04:
Tie games: 8 GP, 1-4-5, -2
OT losses: 6 GP, 0-7-7, -3
1G losses: 11 GP, 3-1-4, -7
In games tied or lost by one goal (excluding empty-netters) in 2003-04, Martin St. Louis scored 4 goals and 12 assists for 16 points in 27 games, being involved in 36% of his team's offence. He was also -12 in those games combined (his team gave up 3 EN goals).
In games tied or lost by one goal in 2001-02 (no EN), Jarome Iginla scored 21 goals and 13 assists for 34 points in 31 games, being involved in 51% of his team's offence. He was +6 in those games combined (despite his team giving up 7 EN GA).
Only one of those two players is still nitpicked to this day for not doing more to help his team win close games.
After, Iginla started playing well again, and the Flames started winning (he scored 23 points in 14 games, and the Flames went 7-5-2). This was right after his very impressive Olympics tournament. Maybe the Flames could have made the playoffs if Iginla maintained that level of play in mid March (as Bertuzzi did - see below).
7-5-2 is on pace for 94 points/82, in other words exactly the record needed to tie the Canucks for the final playoff spot, so even when Iginla was going off at a 1.64 PPG the Flames didn't exactly have much margin. If you look at his season outside of the two cold streaks you have identified, he scored at a 1.55 PPG. I agree Calgary could maybe have made the playoffs if he maintained that play, but that requires Iginla scoring at around 1.6 PPG all season long (which corresponds to 131 points/82).
If you think the Flames missed the playoffs because Iginla didn't maintain his scoring, and he didn't deserve the Hart because his team missed the playoffs, then it follows that Iginla didn't deserve the Hart because he didn't score 130 points in the second-lowest scoring NHL season since 1956.
I think it's a stretch to attribute the increase in Iginla's icetime to the the injuries to Savard, Wilm and Lowry. Savard was by far the best of those three, and he only missed the last ten games of the season (Iginla's ice time rose well before that). Besides, he was a centre so, if anything, his ice time would have been given to Craig Conroy. Wilm and Lowry were depth forwards with minimal offensive talent (they scored 18 points and 13 points that year) - and Wilm was a centre so, again, his ice time would probably be given to Conroy.
Sorry, forgot to mention a key fact backing up my point here, which is that Rob Niedermayer also missed significant time in the second half of the 2001-02 season before returning shortly before Savard was injured. As a result, Calgary played 30 of their final 39 games while missing one or both of their 3rd and 4th best forwards, which had a critical impact on the team's already very limited depth.
Iginla's period of increased ice time seems to correspond exactly to this period. Niedermayer was injured on Jan 8, and from the start of the season though Jan 8 Iginla averaged 21:15 in ice time, including 15:45 at even strength and 0:13 on the PK. From Jan 9 onward Iginla averaged 23:35 (17:31 at ES and 1:06 on the PK). Iginla's PP time actually dropped slightly, from 5:17 to 4:58.
The fact that Iginla's increase was exclusively ES/PK supports injury replacement being a key factor (whereas a boost on the PP would be predicted by the "stat-padding" theory). Calgary's PK TOI leaders among forwards in the first half were Wilm (2:51), Lowry (2:04) and Niedermayer (2:01), all of whom were impacted by injuries late in the year, forcing the rest of the team to pick up the slack while shorthanded. Conroy's ice time was indeed up as well (20:15 to 21:40, also increasing at ES/PK but dropping on the PP), but his TOI did not in fact increase as much as Iginla's in the second half.
I'm not saying that Iginla should only have played 16 minutes per game during that final, futile stretch. But he didn't really run away with the Art Ross until the final 10 games of the season (when the Flames knew they weren't going to qualify for the playoffs, which was, in my opinion, at least partly due to Iginla's two cold streaks). He still had five players (Naslund, Sakic, Oatse, Jagr, Francis) within ten points of him, and then he ran away with 16 points during the final 10 games, averaging nearly 24 minutes a game.
But Iginla didn't run away with the Art Ross, Naslund actually closed the gap to 6 by season's end. He ran away with the Richard, sure, but he could have skipped his last 17 games and still won that trophy (not to mention he led pretty much wire-to-wire). And regardless of the final scoring gap, a season of 52 goals and 96 points in the scoring context of 2001-02 while going +27 on a team that was -13 at even strength should be impressive enough to put a player in strong Hart contention anyway.
Iginla's maximum ice time in 2004 (when the Flames were fighting for a playoff spot until the end) was 25:41, and he had 13 games in 2002 with more than that. Iginla didn't need absurd ice time during a crucial playoff push in 2004, so why did he need it in 2002 when their season was effectively over?
Again, why are you assuming Iginla personally needed the ice time, instead of the Calgary Flames needing more Iginla?
Calgary Goals Scored Without Iginla on the Ice:
2001-02: 75
2002-03: 98
2003-04: 108
I keep mentioning secondary scoring because 75 is an absurdly low number. I would be interested to know how many times a star forward has ever had less off-ice secondary scoring support than that (even after adjusting for DPE scoring levels). I looked up Bure in 2000-01 and Jagr in 1998-99 as examples of elite players carrying a large share of a weak team's offence around the same period, and both had more support despite substantially more TOI:
Bure, 2000-01: 78 off-ice goals, 26:52 TOI
Jagr, 1998-99: 83 off-ice goals, 25:51 TOI
And here is the same number for some of the other players mentioned in this discussion, who get the bonus points because they participated in playoff races:
Team Goals Scored While Off the Ice:
Bertuzzi, 2001-02: 139
Modano, 2001-02: 118
St. Louis, 2003-04: 115
It's a stretch to say it shouldn't matter "at all". That's the point of the regular season, after all. I'm not opposed to players on non-playoff teams winning trophies. Lemieux deserved the 1988 Hart. McDavid probably deserved it in 2018 (at least he should have been a finalist). Luongo deserved the Vezina in 2004. But I don't think it's wrong to use playoff qualification as a tiebreaker when there are two deserving candidates.
If all things are equal then sure, but according to Hockey Reference's SRS rating 9 of the 13 best teams in the league in 2001-02 played in the Western Conference. I still maintain (as a Habs fan) that Montreal's playoff qualification was entirely based on the external factor of unbalanced conference/schedule luck, which seems like an odd thing to use as an award tiebreaker in that type of scenario.
I'd have no objections to a claim that Theodore deserved the Hart because he had 46 GSAA and very possibly contributed more to his team than Iginla (even though I think that Iginla does have a pretty good case himself). But saying that Theodore deserved the Hart based on reasons like playing in a much easier conference or his 29 worst games being clustered less tightly than Iginla's isn't nearly as convincing to me.