Screengrab by NHL Beardsoffs

In a surprise to absolutely no one, unless you were to time-travel back to February– in case it would be a surprise to everyone, Alex Ovechkin has been named a finalist for the Hart Trophy, awarded each year to the player deemed most valuable to his team by a bunch of snooty professional hockey writers with their cocky strides and musky odors.

Ovechkin scored a league-high 32 goals in 2013 and added another 24 assists. His shot total (4.6 shots a game) was a bounce back from recent years. Plus he got to grow facial hair again.

The two other finalists are NYI’s John Tavares and Sidney Crosby.

The Hart Trophy winner will be announced in Las Vegas this summer.

Your press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / MAY 10, 2013
OVECHKIN, CROSBY AND TAVARES NAMED HART TROPHY FINALISTS
NEW YORK (May 10, 2013) – Center Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, right wing Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals and center John Tavares of the New York Islanders are the three finalists for the
2012-13 Hart Memorial Trophy, awarded “to the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team,” the National Hockey League announced today.

Members of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association submitted ballots for the Hart Trophy at the conclusion of the regular season, with the top three vote-getters designated as finalists. The winner will be announced during the 2013 Stanley Cup Final, with more detail on format to be released at a later date.

Following are the finalists for the Hart Trophy, in alphabetical
order:

Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh Penguins

Although he missed the final 12 games of the regular season due to injury, Crosby still finished fourth in the League with 56 points and second with 41 assists to help the Penguins claim the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. He collected points in 28 of the 36 games he played in (77.8%), including 17 multi-point efforts, and recorded three point streaks of six games or more, including an eight-game stretch Feb. 24-March 10 (5-15—20). Crosby also finished fourth in the NHL with a +26 rating and posted his second career five-assist game March 10 vs. NY Islanders, becoming the only active NHLer with more than one such game in his career.
The 25-year-old Cole Harbour, N.S., native previously won the Hart Trophy in 2006-07 and also was a finalist for the award in 2009-10.

Alex Ovechkin, Washington Capitals

Ovechkin tallied 32 goals in 48 games, including 23 in his final 23 contests, to become the first three-time winner of the Maurice “Rocket”
Richard Trophy as the NHL’s goal-scoring leader. He also finished third in the League in points (56), first in power-play goals (16), first in power-play points (27) and first in shots on goal (220), leading the Capitals to an 11-1-1 record in April and their fifth Southeast Division title in the last six years. Ovechkin recorded points in nine straight games March 17-April 2 (10-5—15), including a five-game goal streak March 17-24, and tallied his 30th goal of the year April 20, becoming the ninth player in League history to score 30 or more goals in each of his first eight seasons. The 27-year-old Moscow native is a two-time Hart Trophy winner (2007-08, 2008-09) and also was a finalist for the award in 2009-10.

John Tavares, New York Islanders

Tavares ranked third in the League with 28 goals and led the Islanders with 47 points in 48 games to propel the team to its first postseason berth since 2006-07. He scored 15 of his goals on the road (third in the NHL), helping the Islanders record their best road winning percentage in franchise history (.667). Tavares also ranked in the top 10 in the League in even-strength goals (19), power-play goals (nine) and game-winning goals (five). He scored in five straight games Feb. 7-16, including his fourth career hat trick Feb. 16 vs. New Jersey, and posted 13 multi-point games. The 22-year-old Mississauga, Ont., native is a first-time finalist for the Hart Trophy.

Photo credit: Paul Chiasson

Over the next five days, the Capitals will finish the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season with three home games. The Caps’ match-ups with Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Boston will not only determine if Washington wins the Southeast Division and makes the playoffs, they’ll also sort out the trophy races that Alex Ovechkin is involved in. Ovechkin, after not winning any hardware since 2010, is in contention for four awards: the Ted Lindsey trophy for players’ MVP, the Art Ross trophy (for most points), the Maurice Richard trophy (for most goals), and the Hart trophy (for most valuable player).

While The Great Eight and his peers control his destiny with three of these four awards, the esteemed members of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association will decide the Hart Trophy. This is the same media that in the last three years has literally flogged Ovechkin with a spiked 2 x 4 painted with a red maple leaf and dripping with Tim Horton’s coffee. Because when every great player gets older and his team becomes less aggressive, it’s the media’s moral obligation to antagonize him to casual fans and excoriate him at every turn.

I mean, look at some of this stuff.

• On February 27th of this past year, NBC analyst Mike Milbury begged Ovechkin to “act like a man, for god’s sake” and to “stop acting like a baby.” Ovi “should be ashamed of himself,” and on that one memorable night in February, Ovechkin “failed” the superstar test “miserably” with “an awful display of hockey.” Babies and women are apparently very low on Milbury’s stack ranking.
• Former player Ray Ferraro said recently that Ovechkin is a hockey idiot. “I do not think he’s got a high hockey IQ,” Ferraro said, as transcribed by the DC Sports Bog. “He goes for power, he goes in straight lines, he doesn’t see around him really well, and to me, one of the great traits that Sidney Crosby has is his ability to think the game at the highest speed. And I don’t think Ovechkin’s got that.”
• CBC analyst Craig Simpson, in an online chat earlier this season, consider Ovechkin a poisonous asset: ”[You] can’t win with Ovie as your face of franchise and so called leader. toxic.” He also thought the Caps should buy him out.
• This season, local writer Thom Loverro wondered out loud if Ovi would rather play in Russia. “You have to wonder,” Loverro wrote,”after having a taste of that for several months, if Ovechkin wishes he were back in Moscow playing for the Dynamo instead of here in Washington skating for the Capitals.”
• NBC4′s Adam Vingan said Ovechkin on right wing “[shifted] between looking completely lost and disappearing completely.”
• Sports Illustrated’s Stu Hackell believed at one point this season that Ovechkin’s “already peaked.”
• Fat-gate.
• ESPN’s Sean Allen observed that Ovi “has looked slower than usual and isn’t playing with as much force as usual.”
• And the local Caps media? They’re not sold on Ovechkin’s credentials for the Hart either. Neil Greenberg thinks Ovi’s not quite MVP material. Stephen Whyno’s got Crosby as his MVP.

Despite there being strong evidence that Ovechkin has carried his team and done exactly what the Hart trophy entails, he still has detractors. I’m not blind to the fantastic seasons of Sergei Bobrovsky, John Tavares, Sidney Crosby, and Jonathan Toews, but if the Capitals make the playoffs after such an awful start, Ovechkin deserves the Hart trophy. Period.

Here’s something you can do to get Ovi over these last three games. Every time he scores a goal, makes a big hit, or hell– any time his name is growled by Wes Johnson, chant M – V – P! Because optics matter. A Captain with uniform support of his fans looks ever slightly more attractive to the media members who pick the Hart.

So create your own signs, or print out the one I made below.

Let the NHL world know that Ovi deserves recognition. He’s successfully switched to right wing, changed his game, revolutionized the power play, and scored like it was 2008 or something. Seasons like this can’t happen every year, so enjoy it and cheer it on. And while you’re taking it all in, shout like a madman.

Photo credit: Andre Ringuette

Earlier I wrote about how the Hart Trophy was a poorly defined award of limited value. Now I’ll share why I think Alex Ovechkin absolutely must have it. I’m going to share some stats and rebut some excuses, but the whole thing boils down to this: the Capitals needed the best from Ovechkin, and he delivered it.

But first, I’m going to repeat what we talked about before. This is the most valuable player to his team, not just the best all-around player. If we’re talking best player? I’d say it’s Sidney Crosby. Hands down. But most valuable? And to his team? That’s a more interesting conversation. And now, baby, you’ve got a stew going.

I suppose there are a bunch of ways to measure how valuable a player is to his team, but the most obvious is how much of his team’s offense (sorry, goalies) comes from him. The chart below shows the percentage of total team goals each of our four big names has personally offered.

Despite missing a quarter of the season, Crosby still has had his greasy Canadian fingers in nearly 40% of the Penguins’ league-leading goal tally. Alex Ovechkin isn’t far behind (37.2%), but he also scored more than one-fifth of Washington’s goals, slightly above where Long Island’s John Tavares placed. Jonathan Toews isn’t all that exceptional when it comes to carrying production water for Chicago.

(By the way, Steven Stamkos’s numbers last years were better than all these guys: He had points on 40% of Tampa’s goals and scored 25% of them personally, but no playoffs, no trophy.)

The point here is that a player’s raw numbers– goals and assists– should be considered in context of his team. Washington depends on Alex Ovechkin to produce, and he this year has done exactly that.

The most compelling argument against Ovechkin as “outstanding player” is all about how his slow start to the season doomed him. Those people are right. Alex Ovechkin had just 2 goals through the season’s first 10 games, and his team had just two wins in that same span. I think that’s enough to cost him any chance at league MVP, i.e. the Ted Lindsay– but it just underscores his case as the player most valuable to his team, i.e. the Hart.

This next graph shows how the Caps’ fate has been tied to Alex Ovechkin’s goal production… and how fantastically that has turned out for them.

The Capitals didn’t win until Alex Ovechkin started scoring. The Capitals couldn’t hit .500 until Ovi cracked .6 goals per game. They’re on the same trajectory here– away from a lottery draft pick and headed towards the postseason. It should be noted that within 10 days after Adam Oates switched him to the right wing and reunited him with the uber-Swede, Nick Backstrom, Ovechkin jumped from 0.36 goals per game to 0.50 goals per game and climbing.

Consistency is a virtue– one that Ovechkin does not possess– but I don’t think it’s critical to the proposition of the Hart. The more important matter is how Alex Ovechkin’s goal scoring (and assisting!) has been critical to the Capitals’ success. The Capitals without a great Ovechkin are not a good hockey team. The Penguins without Sidney Crosby, meanwhile, are still terrifyingly good; they just move less merchandise. It’s your basic Michael Jordan on the Bulls versus Michael Jordan on the Space Jam team scenario– although in my metaphor the Swedish Bugs Bunny is really driving puck possession for MJ.

Another dig on Ovechkin is that his playing in the Southeast Division puts him on the NHL version of the bunny slope. The other four teams in his division rank mostly in the bottom third of teams in shots and goals against. None of them has a save percentage above 90.1%. The Southeast really does stink, and Alex Ovechkin is wafting the fumes. His point production against the SE more than doubles how he does against the Atlantic and Northeast divisions.

Still, I really doubt people are filing the same objections about the Northwest.

Finally, there’s the fancystat argument. Alex Ovechkin’s underlying numbers– particularly in puck possession– just aren’t as strong as his peers.

Alex Ovechkin is the only player in the group who sees more shot attempts go towards his team’s net than the other guy’s net when playing 5-on-5. We could try to explain that away, but it’s true. I just don’t think it matters. These advanced stats are helpful in estimating how a player may perform in the future independent of variance, but we have actual performance metrics for this season we could use instead. The fact that John Tavares likely won’t shoot 17% next year is immaterial to adjudicating how well he did this year.

Again, I don’t know who will win the Hart, and I think it’s foolish to try to guess how hundreds of pro hockey writers will vote, particularly given the criteria for Hart we’ve heard before. I do know that Alex Ovechkin has a damn good case to win. But so does Sergei Bobrovksy.

In the end, it doesn’t matter all that much. We’ve got the Art Ross and the Rocket Richard, and those guys don’t care about Southeast bias or ZoneStart-adjusted Fenwick Close on turf against left-handed pitchers. And the totality of NHL Awards adds up to exactly shrapnel compared to the real goal of a hockey season: the Stanley Cup.

p.s.

Photo credit: Francois Lacasse

Sidney Crosby, John Tavares, Jonathan Toews, and Alex Ovechkin. Those are the names most seen in the deluge of chatter about this season’s Hart Trophy, the award given each year to the player deemed most valuable to his team. Washington’s own goal-scoring leader Alex Ovechkin seems to be the underdog in those conversations for a variety of reasons, namely that he plays in a bad division and wasn’t exceptional until the middle of March. I think those reasons are suspect, but the Hart conversation is already marred by a whole lot of questionable conventional wisdom.

The Hart Trophy is supposed to be awarded to the player that the Professional Hockey Writers Association deems most valuable to his team. While the actual inscription on the Hart Trophy leaves out the whole “to his team” part, I find that little prepositional phrase to be crucial. The NHL is unlike the MLB, whose MVP award has a simpler definition (“most outstanding player“), the same one used for the Ted Lindsay Award.

The Lindsay is the NHL’s real MVP award: voted on by the players and without consideration for team quality or any of the other logical convolutions that make the Hart the cause of ulcers for everyone silly enough to care about it.

The Hart is for the League’s Best Player

The Hart is not for the league’s best player. It is for the player most valuable to his team. Says so right on NHL.com.

If the Hart were truly an assessment of who the league’s best player is, we could just calculate everyone’s GVT (goals versus threshold, a catch-all stat similar to baseball’s WAR, invented by Tom Awad). The guy with the highest GVT gets the trophy and we all go home.

But it’s not about “who’s best?”, it’s about “who is most valuable?” An insultingly dumb analogy would go like this: a glass of water is more valuable to a guy in a desert than it is to a guy with a Brita. To understand value, we have to understand context. In this case, context is the team. So let’s talk about teams.

Non-Playoff Teams Need Not Apply

The assertion seems to be that about half of all players are disqualified from contention because their teams sucked. Imagine a player who scored more than a quarter of his team’s total goals and assisted in another 15%. Is he not valuable because his team valued him too much? The logic sort of unspools there. That player was Steven Stamkos, and using the NHL’s own definition of the Hart, he certainly deserved a look for last year’s trophy.

Here’s the thing. A great player on a bad team is more valuable to his team than an equally great player on a good team. This isn’t an argument of relative greatness (let’s say they have identical goals and assists); it’s an argument of value, which is the whole damn point of the award in the first place. So yes, sadly, players with good teammates should get “punished” because they are less valuable as a result.

No Goalies Allowed Either

The last goalie to win the Hart Trophy was Jose Theodore, back in 2001-2002. He posted a .931 save percentage in 67 games that year. Since then, Roberto Luongo, Mike Smith, Jonathan Quick, and Ryan Miller have had comparable seasons without the same recognition. Perhaps giving the Hart to a goalie is redundant since the Vezina Trophy, awarded to the best goalie, already exists. But Mike Smith’s performance in Phoenix last year and particularly Lou’s back in pre-lockout Florida were extremely valuable to their teams.

Maybe it’s just that goalies play fewer games a season than skaters. Now that you mention it…

The Games-Played Cutoff

Sidney Crosby will have played in 75% of games this season. That’s a larger percentage than Mario Lemieux played when he won the Hart in 1992-1993. By conventional wisdom, Crosby should not be eliminated from Hart contention, and I totally agree. While there seems to be some kind of minimum threshold of games played for someone to be considered a Hart nominee, it’s arbitrary. That’s okay: this is and should be a subjective award based on the individual value judgments made by its voters. I’m just here to question what those value judgments are, and this one seems legit.

To me, awarding the Hart is identifying the player who is more indispensable to his team than anyone else on any team. It’s not the player who– if you replaced him with some schmuck off the streets (let’s just call that schmuck Jussi Jokinen)– his team would still win six in a row and eight of their last ten games. That replaced player may still be fantastic (in fact, this hypothetical player from Nova Scotia might still be a slam-dunk for the Ted Lindsay), but his value proportional to his team is not as high as other players’.

All the points above are important in discussing how to differentiate good players, but they’re not really relevant to players’ values to their teams, and that’s what matters. Or is supposed to matter, at least.

I don’t know who will win the Hart Trophy. If it’s Crosby, the cynic in me would feel vindicated and the hockey fan in me would be delighted. But judging by public conversations about the Hart, the deliberative process is a mess– poorly defined and clouded by all kinds of dubious wisdom.

Predicting who will win the Hart is a sucker’s game. I usually find it more illuminating to talk in terms of “should” rather than “will” anyway. Especially in the case of the Hart Trophy, which is stupid.

Next: Why Ovi should win the stupid Hart.

p.s. -

Photo credit: Greg Fiume

Alex Ovechkin is playing very well. He leads the league in goals, has tallied 18 times in his last 16 games, and is the single biggest reason the Washington Capitals are headed to the playoffs. We think he should win the Hart Trophy, awarded to the NHL’s most valuable player. Adam Oates, we now learn, agrees.

“I’m obviously very biased about that,” he told reporters after Washington’s 5-1 win on Tuesday, a game in which Ovechkin scored. “My answer would be yeah, absolutely. Obviously Sidney Crosby is another candidate for sure. He had such a scoring lead. But I think you’ve gotta factor in the fact that he’s missed a lot of games.”

“But it’s not really for me to say though, it’s you guys,” he added, referring to the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association whose members vote on the award.

Oates, perhaps, is even more deserving of a trophy than Ovi. The first-time head coach has mentored Ovechkin masterfully, guiding him through a difficult switch from left to right wing. It was a change Oates firmly believed would make him a better player — and it has. Meanwhile, Oates’s 1-3-1 power play is has been key to the Great Eight’s success this year, with Ovi registering a league-topping 15 man-advantage goals (out of his 28 overall).

“Alex has really led our team,” Oates said. “You see it every night now. You saw his energy tonight. Every team that we play, they have to focus on him. He’s in a good place.”

#OviForHart #OatesForAdams

The Celebration Photo by Luis M. Alvarez.

Wicked Wrister! Video of Ovechkin netting #50 and Nicklas Backstrom getting point #100.

Post Video. Ovechkin on #50: “It’s a Great Big Number”.

With the regular season winding down it’s only fitting we should start seeing opinions on who should win the Hart Trophy, “given to the player judged to be the most valuable to his team.”

Edward Fraser feels there are a quintet of contenders while Ken Campbell argues Henrik Sedin deserves to be included in the conversation but doesn’t deserve to win it. Tim Morgan thinks both Gaborik and Lundqvist deserve nominations but when it comes down to it, based on previous voting, it is shaping up to be a two-horse race: Alex Ovechkin and Henrik Sedin.  (Sorry Sidney, maybe next year?)

Since 1998-9 (the first year of the Maurice Richard Trophy) the voters seem to reward players that rank 1st or 2nd in Points for the regular season. Only G Jose Theodore (2001-2002) and D Chris Pronger (1999-2000) are the exceptions during this time frame.

That leads me to believe it will come down to Ovechkin and Sedin despite the outcome as they battle for the Art Ross Trophy.

So lets look at the contenders:

Henrik Sedin

Henrik has really decoupled himself from his twin brother this season, and showed he is the driving force behind Vancouver’s success this season. And while he may not be as dynamic as Ovechkin (or Crosby for that matter) Henrik has quietly shown the ability to be the exact type of player Vancouver has needed: Never going longer than four games without a point this season.

Alex Ovechkin

If you ignore the suspensions and Russia’s let-down in the Olympics, the biggest knock on the reigning Hart winner’s chances to threepeat (something which only two other players have ever done: Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky) seems to be that the Caps went 7-2-1 without him in the lineup this season. But as Ed Frankovic correctly points out 4 of those wins came against Florida and the two losses were to New Jersey, a team the Caps could potentially see in the playoffs. With Ovechkin in the lineup the Caps went 1-0-1 against those same Devils. And Nate Ewell reminded us last night, Caps have a better record with Ovi as captain (.821) than they did when he was out of the lineup (.750)

Plus, Sedin is only close to Ovechkin in Total Points because he has played in 10(!) more games than Ovechkin. If we adjust Ovechkin’s stats to an 82 game season, the point totals look much different:

1. Alexander Ovechkin, 124
2. Henrik Sedin, 109

And then we aren’t even having a debate. So look for Ovechkin to become the NHL’s third threepeat Hart Trophy winner.