Nikita Kucherov is the clear favorite for the Art Ross Trophy

[ijuka]

I know, you're gonna blame the cards, but at least they use the exact same ways of measuring for both players.

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Just putting in a reference point for a guy who is generally considered elite defensively.. It manages to capture that at least. Weird how MacKinnon doesn't show up too well. Could it be....?

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I'm really not sure who considers MacKinnon to be great defensively. I thought it was common knowledge that he is an offensive forward. I don't think there's been any time when he was considered a great defensive center or a Selke candidate.

 

[Buck Naked]

I'm really not sure who considers MacKinnon to be great defensively. I thought it was common knowledge that he is an offensive forward. I don't think there's been any time when he was considered a great defensive center or a Selke candidate.

A lot of people assume that MacKinnon is great defensively based on the way he plays.

 

[Soundwave]

This was the largest the lead got. Date was January 24.

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So, it only took McDavid 28 games over the course of two months to pick up 21 points on MacKinnon and 18 on Kucherov.

62 points in those 28 games (2.21 PPG) and 106 in his past 53 (2.00 PPG).

All you can do is laugh, it's ridiculous. He's the best player since Mario.

No offense to the other guys, but if McDavid wasn't playing with what was probably a torn hip flexor or torn ab muscle for like a month+, this isn't even a race.

It's ridiculous too because by his standards I still don't think McDavid is having some kind of great season. Shooting percentage is his lowest since his first full year in the league (16-17), that's generally a tell tale sign of a bad season for most players.

 

[Breakfast of Champs]

All you can do is laugh, it's ridiculous. He's the best player since Mario.

No offense to the other guys, but if McDavid wasn't playing with what was probably a torn hip flexor or torn ab muscle for like a month+, this isn't even a race.

It's ridiculous too because by his standards I still don't think McDavid is having some kind of great season. Shooting percentage is his lowest since his first full year in the league (16-17), that's generally a tell tale sign of a bad season for most players.

at this point it does seem like a foregone conclusion he will win the Art Ross. Its basically a 10 game stretch to win the AR on a relatively even playing field between the 3. In normal circumstances you would be dumb not to pick McDavid. Given his slow start and apparent injury earlier this season, and subsequent climb to the top despite this - it would be even dumber.

Now I'm not saying its impossible for the others, but I would say McDavid should be pegged at about 80% to take this. History would tell us so, and the current situation would tell us so. The fact that there's a good chance he puts up 140+ again is pretty crazy. He has 11 games to go and he has 25 pts in his last 11. If he replicated that he would finish with 147 in 80 games. Its doable.

 

[Soundwave]

at this point it does seem like a foregone conclusion he will win the Art Ross. Its basically a 10 game stretch to win the AR on a relatively even playing field between the 3. In normal circumstances you would be dumb not to pick McDavid. Given his slow start and apparent injury earlier this season, and subsequent climb to the top despite this - it would be even dumber.

Now I'm not saying its impossible for the others, but I would say McDavid should be pegged at about 80% to take this. History would tell us so, and the current situation would tell us so. The fact that there's a good chance he puts up 140+ again is pretty crazy. He has 11 games to go and he has 25 pts in his last 11. If he replicated that he would finish with 147 in 80 games. Its doable.

I don't think he'll win because I suspect the Oilers will rest him and Draisaitl a few of their games. Maybe not, but they have a condensed schedule (thanks NHL schedule makers) for no real great reason down the stretch.

Still I think even by overtaking MacKinnon and Kucherov this late in the season in PPG proves a point if any had to be made ... even in "dream/career/all the stars are aligning for me!" seasons for those guys, McDavid can just step on the gas a bit and go above those guys.

Dude is an alien, what else can you say.

 

[Frosty415]

I don’t expect him to admit he was wrong or anything I just need to know he’s okay

He did the same thing last year and disappeared when McD hit 150+

 

[RussianGuyovich]

The only reason Kucherov is still in the race is due to empty net points:

Kucherov- 11
MacKinnon- 7
McDavid- 5

If only McDavid was an empty net merchant.....

I agree. It’s going to be great when kucherov wins it and you cry about this all summer. Lmao.

I don't think he'll win because I suspect the Oilers will rest him and Draisaitl a few of their games. Maybe not, but they have a condensed schedule (thanks NHL schedule makers) for no real great reason down the stretch.

Still I think even by overtaking MacKinnon and Kucherov this late in the season in PPG proves a point if any had to be made ... even in "dream/career/all the stars are aligning for me!" seasons for those guys, McDavid can just step on the gas a bit and go above those guys.

Dude is an alien, what else can you say.

I imagine mcd has probably had his foot on the gas all season just based on common sense.

 

[Soundwave]

I agree. It’s going to be great when kucherov wins it and you cry about this all summer. Lmao.


I imagine mcd has probably had his foot on the gas all season just based on common sense.

Having watched almost every game McDavid has played this year, I'd say no. It doesn't really feel like he's had his foot on the gas pedal. He was definitely playing seriously injured for a good 4-5 weeks of the season.

Shooting percentage is down, last year was "foot down on the gas pedal" kind of year for him, this year feels like below that, not shooting as much with a poor percentage too. Oilers PP is not as good this year as last year, etc. etc.

Yet, he's still on pace for like 145 points, what can you say.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

An update since I posted last week - Kucherov remains the narrow favourite for the Art Ross, but McDavid (4 points back, with one game in hand) is only a couple of percentage points behind. This has been fueled by McDavid's five consecutive 2+ point games. Here are the current odds:

• Kucherov: 42% (previously: 55%)
• McDavid: 40% (previously: 22%)
• MacKinnon: 27% (previously: 32%)

I'm not going to bother showing Pastrnak or Panarin anymore. They have less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of winning the Art Ross.

McDavid is at 119 points. Once he reaches 120 (which he will, barring a season-ending injury), this will be the first time since 1996 that the league featured three 120+ point scorers (Lemieux, Jagr and Sakic).

Probability of reaching 130 points:

• Kucherov: 99% (previously: 98%)
• McDavid: 99% (previously: 82%)
• MacKinnon: 98% (previously: 93%)

Probability of reaching 140 points:

• Kucherov: 42% (previously: 38%)
• McDavid: 41% (previously: 16%)
• MacKinnon: 30% (previously: 22%)

Kucherov and McDavid both have a 1% chance of reaching 150 points.

I'm not going to post a full update so soon. But after last night, based on my model, McDavid has emerged as the favourite for the Art Ross.

As of today, the probabilities are 57% for McDavid, 36% for Kucherov, and 17% for MacKinnon. If you go back to my original post on March 10th, McDavid was only at 37%. Since then, he's scored 19 points in 8 games (Kucherov scored 17 in 7, and MacKinnon has cooled off, scoring 12 in 8).

Two important caveats - first, this model works best over large sample sizes. It doesn't take into account the difficulty of a player's schedule. Over the course of an entire season, the differences are trivial. However, now that we're down to the final few weeks, this could impact the race for the Art Ross. To the extent that these three players are playing schedules that are wildly different in terms of difficulty, this hasn't been taken into account.

Second, in the event of a tie, McDavid would lose the Art Ross to either Kucherov or MacKinnon due to fewer goals. Checking the math, it's accurate to say that he has a 57% chance of leading the league in points (tied or outright). Of those outcomes, he really has a 49% chance of winning the Art Ross (ie leading the league in points outright), and a 7% chance of losing the tiebreaker (ie tying for the lead in points with Kucherov and/or MacKinnon, but technically losing the Art Ross). This could be the 4th time in NHL history that someone loses the Art Ross on this technicality (the others are Wayne Gretzky, Eric Lindros, and Andy Bathgate).

 

[Regal]

I know, you're gonna blame the cards, but at least they use the exact same ways of measuring for both players.

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Just putting in a reference point for a guy who is generally considered elite defensively.. It manages to capture that at least. Weird how MacKinnon doesn't show up too well. Could it be....?

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I was comparing Kucherov and MacKinnon, not McDavid and MacKinnon.


Also, 3 year weighted cards are irrelevant to a discussion on the Hart this year, and other sources have MacKinnon considerably better than that.

JFresh’s numbers also make no sense considering basic things like xGA are strong for MacKinnon. I also question if they even include this year considering the years listed are 20-21, 21-22, then 22-24. Seems like something is off. And considering this is the evolving hockey data for last year, which coincides with the JFresh chart, I’m assuming none of that is this year or it was very early in the year and combined with last year.

And for reference, this is McDavid and Kucherov this year

 

[OilWagon]

depends how his skating ages I imagine

he'll lose a step eventually and will still be very good but won't be quite the same

the question is does that happen in the next couple years or so or does it take till like his mid 30s?

Tbh he's already lost a step to some extent, he doesn't have near as many explosive rushes as he used too. His game is way more predicated around cycling right now and he is having the best defensive season of his career. There's a reason he's among the top of the league in basically every possession stat this year.

 

[Golden_Jet]

I was comparing Kucherov and MacKinnon. Also, 3 year weighted cards are irrelevant to a discussion on the Hart this year, and other sources have MacKinnon considerably better than that.

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JFresh’s numbers also make no sense considering basic things like xGA are strong for MacKinnon. I also question if they even include this year considering the years listed are 20-21, 21-22, then 22-24. Seems like something is off. And considering this is the evolving hockey data for last year, which coincides with the JFresh chart, I’m assuming none of that is this year.

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And for reference, this is McDavid and Kucherov this year

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Natural stat truck has xGA 5 on 5 with McDavid with a small edge.

 

[Regal]

Having watched almost every game McDavid has played this year, I'd say no. It doesn't really feel like he's had his foot on the gas pedal. He was definitely playing seriously injured for a good 4-5 weeks of the season.

Shooting percentage is down, last year was "foot down on the gas pedal" kind of year for him, this year feels like below that, not shooting as much with a poor percentage too. Oilers PP is not as good this year as last year, etc. etc.

Yet, he's still on pace for like 145 points, what can you say.

It’s one of those things where you start to wonder what the limit is exactly. Like if he was never hurt and the PP was rolling like last year. Could he hit 165 if everything went right?

 

[Regal]

Natural stat truck has xGA 5 on 5 with McDavid with a small edge.

Yes, with both numbers being low. MacKinnon is in the top 1/3 of the 214 forwards with at least 800 5v5 minutes in both xGA/60 and relxGA/60. There’s nothing in the traditional numbers that would suggest MacKinnon would have a bad defensive rating this year like that chart suggested. I’m assuming the “22-24” year listed was likely combining both seasons early in this year, which would negatively influence it by last year’s numbers, which weren’t very good.

MacKinnon isn’t some great defensive player, but I think he’s been stronger on the back check this year and he’s been so good offensively and in possession I think teams are on their heels and he’s been limiting chances against as a solid rate this year, and better than in the past two years.

 

[archangel2]

3 man drag race is on

 

[soothsayer]

Let's be honest, he's winning the Art Ross again unless he gets injured.

McDavid is a scoring title or two away from taking a temporary hiatus to play some random sport like Baseball for a year.

 

[PuckG]

A lot of people assume that MacKinnon is great defensively based on the way he plays.

A lot of people also just take whoever is being compared to McDavid and automatically award them defensive prowess that they don’t have. It’s one of the way people try to narrow the gap.

 

[Regal]

A lot of people also just take whoever is being compared to McDavid and automatically award them defensive prowess that they don’t have. It’s one of the way people try to narrow the gap.

That entire exchange was made up though because the poster assumed McDavid was being compared to and then used charts that aren’t relevant to this year.

 

[PuckG]

That entire exchange was made up though because the poster assumed McDavid was being compared to and then used charts that aren’t relevant to this year.

Fair enough, but I think my point still stands. The automatic bonus with any player being compared to McDavid is “defence.” This is in spite of McDavid playing well defensively for quite some time and most of the time, the comparable is not better.

 

[Regal]

Fair enough, but I think my point still stands. The automatic bonus with any player being compared to McDavid is “defence.” This is in spite of McDavid playing well defensively for quite some time and most of the time, the comparable is not better.

I think that’s starting to turn though as well, at least to current competition, in part because the offense is too strong and because his underlying numbers have been good for awhile. It’s mostly just the random “will never win if he doesn’t play defense” and the “Crosby was more complete” crowd.

 

[McFlyingV]

Do most exceptional skaters lose a step until their late 30s?

Lots of examples of guys like Cogliano that stuck around forever because they remained amazing skaters.

Mike Gartner put up the fastest skater at the all-star game in 1996 at the age of 37, a record that lasted 20 years until 2016. I think McDavid will be ok if he remains healthy lol.

 

[Offtheboard412]

McDavid is just a machine. Outside of a month or so in 21/22 and the first 16 games this season when he was clearly injured he's been chugging along at a 150+ point pace for almost 4 years now.

 

[McFlyingV]

McDavid is just a machine. Outside of a month or so in 21/22 and the first 16 games this season when he was clearly injured he's been chugging along at a 150+ point pace for almost 4 years now.

Canadian division, weak pacific division, he gets to play with another hart trophy winner, 2nd assist merchant, power play merchant, 3on3 merchant. You want me to keep going?

 

[HabsQC]

Canadian division, weak pacific division, he gets to play with another hart trophy winner, 2nd assist merchant, power play merchant, 3on3 merchant. You want me to keep going?

Now do Gretzky

 

[VainGretzky]

Mike Gartner put up the fastest skater at the all-star game in 1996 at the age of 37, a record that lasted 20 years until 2016. I think McDavid will be ok if he remains healthy lol.

When Mcdavid loses a step he will be a Joe Thornton in his prime comparable