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Connor McDavid is the reigning Hart Trophy winner, capturing the award in 2022-23 after becoming the sixth player to score 150 points during the regular season. He could have won the award in 2021-22 but lost out to Auston Matthews, who had a career-high 60 goals that season.
McDavid walked away with the award in 2020-21 thanks to a league-leading 105 points. It was the first time he was voted NHL MVP in four seasons, having previously won the Hart Trophy in 2016-17, when he had 100 points and led the team to the second round of the playoffs.
McDavid is one of the few skaters in NHL history to win the Hart Trophy on three occasions, and barring a significant injury that prevents him from finishing the season, he's almost guaranteed to be a finalist yet again.
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But does he deserve to win the award?
In 2023-24, he is not the league's leading scorer, hasn't cracked 30 goals, and has been outshined by Matthews (50 goals) and Nikita Kucherov (100 points).
3 reasons why Connor McDavid doesn't deserve to win the Hart Trophy in 2024
#1. McDavid only leads the league in assists
Although he didn't have a solid start to the season, missing a couple of games, McDavid has a point in 46 of the 54 games he's played. The Edmonton Oilers are 32-12-2 when he scores a point.
During the team's eight-game win streak from November to December, he had 22 points, with four goals and 18 assists. He followed up that performance with 26 points over the franchise's historic 16-game win streak in January, thanks to nine goals and 17 assists.
After collecting 70 assists, he's the league leader in the category, but it's by a slim five-point margin.
Last year, he dominated goals, assists, points, points-per-game and powerplay points. Now, the reigning MVP only ranks within the top five for most of those categories, partly because he's only bagged 21 goals, a 43-goal drop in production.
#2. McDavid isn't shooting enough and could miss the 30-goal plateau
Outside of his rookie season, where he only registered 16 goals, McDavid has scored at least 30 goals with three 40-goal campaigns and a league-leading 64 last season. This year, he's averaging just 0.38 goals per game (gpg), down from the 0.78 he produced last season.
For comparison, Matthews is lighting the lamp at 0.92 gpg, which is better than any season McDavid has ever had. So many players are scoring more than he is this season, including Sam Reinhart, who is about to reach 40 goals for the first time in his career with a 0.66 gpg pace.
As the NHL assist leader, it's clear that helping his teammates is the priority this season, which explains the significant dip in production. Last year, he had 11 game-winners to finish second behind David Pastrnak, and he only has two this year.
This indicates that the Oilers don't need him to score to win hockey games, like other teams who rely on Matthews and Pastrnak to carry their teams to wins.
Of course, the assists help everyone around him be better, but people come to watch him score and make end-to-end rushes, not feed an undefended Leon Draisaitl on the back door every night.
#3. McDavid's 90 points don't mask the Oilers' poor lineup construction
Many NHL experts predicted that the Oilers would win the Stanley Cup. However, a 3-9-1 start forced the team to fire one of their best coaches in history, Jay Woodcroft, and go out and hire McDavid's head coach from juniors, Kris Knoblauch.
Since the restructuring, the team is 31-11-1 under their new bench boss, with two lengthy win streaks over many non-playoff caliber teams. Since losing a historic 16-game win streak after the All-Star break, the Oilers are back to being average with a 5-5-1 record, getting outscored 44-41.
Although McDavid has no issues putting up points on a nightly basis, that doesn't help the team when their goalies give up almost three goals a game. Most contending teams like to build from the crease out and develop a solid defensive style that gets wins and shuts down opponents.
The Oilers are the opposite, relying on McDavid and Leon Draisaitl to carry them to 6-5 victories with multiple powerplay points.
Opposing teams are finding ways to beat the Oilers, and it doesn't take much with some questionable defenders and some unproven goalies. Edmonton is in tough-to-win hockey games if McDavid doesn't set up Zach Hyman or Draisaitil for a few goals a night.
Last year, there was no stopping McDavid and his march towards history. Right now, he's being outperformed by several other players across the league. He may be the leader in assists, but it may not be enough to lead the Oilers to the Stanley Cup since they are just in the playoffs by five points.
