TAMPA, Fla. — After an impressive 2023-2024 season, Nikita Kucherov won the Art Ross Trophy for the 2nd time in his career, logging a staggering 144 points.
Winning the Art Ross was just one of the many resume-builders Kucherov had when voters debated who should win the Hart Memorial Trophy, which is given to the MVP in the National Hockey League.
On Thursday night, Kucherov not only came in 2nd to Nathan MacKinnon for the Hart Trophy, voted on by the media, but he also lost out on the Ted Lindsay Award, voted on by the players.
Let’s quickly run through the statistical stuff.
He’s the 5th player ever to reach 100 helpers in a season, but only the 3rd to notch at least 40 goals and 100 assists (Kucherov scored 44 times). He joins the small list with Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky.
Of those 100 assists, 62 were of the primary variety.
He is the 7th player ever to factor into, at least, 50 percent of his team’s scoring.
There was a 54-point gap between Kucherov and the next-highest scorer on his team, Brayden Point, which is the greatest ever in the Salary Cap era.
While MacKinnon has dominated at home, Kucherov has done it on the road with 75 points.
Against the Top-10 teams in the league, Kucherov averaged more than two points per contest, which is significantly more than MacKinnon (1.3PPG) and McDavid (1.35 PPG). When I expand the numbers to playoff teams, the gap gets closer, but Kucherov is still No. 1 by a decent margin.
So, he’s got more points than everyone, he’s done a better job against the best teams, he’s quantifiably outpaced his teammates at a level unmatched and he’s logged one of the greatest seasons ever for someone at his position considering a winger just tallied 100 assists.
So I was surprised when I saw an article from Greg Wyshynski where he polled a sample of writers and 77 percent of them had Nathan MacKinnon at the top of their ballots. These were a handful of the quotes.
"MacKinnon gets the nod here because his consistency has been at a historic level.”
Let the record show, MacKinnon failed to point in 13 games. Nikita Kucherov? 13 games.
Here is another: “It's just too difficult to ignore MacKinnon on a top-heavy Avs team …with (two other players) as the only (teammates) over the 50-point mark this season.”
I wonder if that vote changed because they had five players over that mark, just like the Lightning?
But here’s the winner: "Maybe I'm falling into the 'it's his turn' narrative, but he really has been the best non-goalie in hockey all season."
I can argue for Kucherov until I’m blue in the face, but the biggest opposition to Kuch winning a 2nd Hart Award was this thought right here – it’s MacKinnon’s turn.
I’ve seen complaints about Kucherov’s 5-on-5 numbers, his defense or how he munches too many points on the power play and empty-net goals.
If you bring up the power play stuff, I’m sorry he’s one of the best half-wall players ever.
If you bring up the empty net stuff, don’t drool over Ovechkin breaking Gretzky’s goal record at some point soon.
I’m not going to say Kucherov is a prototypical 200-foot player, but there’s no doubt of the qualified candidates – the Lightning had the weakest blue line. Only four defensemen on this team played north of 60 games. That’s going to hurt his defensive rating.
As for the 5-on-5 stuff, you can have that one. The Lightning struggled with 5-on-5 play for a large majority of the season.
But, it’s abundantly clear to me that Nikita Kucherov lost the MVP vote for more subjective reasons. Kucherov received 26 percent of the first-place votes with 34 voters saying he wasn't a top-3 candidate (another three voters left him off the ballot completely).
Nathan MacKinnon plays hockey like he’s the Rolling Stones and Nikita Kucherov does it like Beethoven. Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid might as well be Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. While we all appreciate classical music, I think everyone prefers going to other concerts.
For every galloping MacKinnon highlight you show, I can match it with some no-look, thread-the-needle, spin-around-and-put-it-on-the-tape pass from Kuch. He doesn’t light up the room with a microphone in front of him and he ticked some people off at the All-Star Game.
So I say this with great respect to the other well-deserving players, while he might not win the politics of this process, he is the best player in the world.
History should have reflected that when we look back at who won the Hart Trophy in the 2023-2024 season.