Hischier, Palmieri, Butcher, Vatanen. Other role players did well like Moore, Wood, and Severson. They're not a pretty team on paper at all, but they played well enough as a team to have league-average defense, the 7th best PK, and average goaltending. Hall provided a lot of the offense, but they weren't a complete dumpster fire without him. And there are other factors outside the Devils: the Panthers (who actually had 2 more ROW than the Devils) missed that last playoff spot by 1 pt; Luongo had a .929 Sv% that season, but he had a bunch of injuries, and would have gotten the Panthers into that last playoff spot if he played even 1-2 more games. It was also slightly easier to make the playoffs that season than this season, where that same WC spot team is on pace for 100-101 pts instead of 97.
McDavid had the highest Point Share of any skater that year, but received only 16.46% of the Hart trophy votes because the Oilers didn't make the playoffs. That's why I think it's nonsense that making the playoffs should be a qualification for the voting...a 1 pt change in the standings and all of a sudden Hall not only wouldn't win, he probably wouldn't have even finished in the top-3. The Devils also won 1 playoff game and were done, which is another problem with the voting method: if playoffs = value, then the logical conclusion is Stanley Cup = value, which would mean players on the remaining 30 teams who didn't win it would have contributed "no value" during the regular season.
Panarin is just doing a little more for the Rangers this year than Hall did for Devils that year. His Point Score pace is higher, the Rangers shot rates with/without Panarin are much more dramatic, and he has a 5v5 Individual Points Percentage of 80.65 whereas Hall had 70.77. He's doing it 5v5 too, Panarin only has 18 PP pts this season.