Re-Ranking the Top Contenders for 2026 Hart Trophy as NHL MVP
The race for MVP is going to be fascinating this season.
Arguably, the top three teams in the league are in the Western Conference, but the way the Eastern Conference has slugged it out has produced a wider swath of fiercely competitive hockey and, almost by virtue of that, fewer obvious MVP candidates.
Think of it this way: to stand out in the West, having hyper-elite superstar talent has been necessary to take charge there. The East has seen deeper teams with a wealth of scoring throughout the lineups, apart from one team in particular (Tampa Bay).
Picking out clear candidates for the league's top individual award this season is so much more difficult because of this. Even the usual MVP suspects have their cases made more difficult by how their teams are playing this season.
We're running out of games in the regular season, and when it's over, the Hart Trophy winner will make sense, we swear, but we're going to rank out some of the top candidates.
(Disclaimer: I am a member of the PHWA and have voted for the NHL awards many times in past years. This ranking is not an exact recreation of what my ballot could look like.)
9. Zach Werenski, Columbus Blue Jackets
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Almost every season, there's a team that rises from the depths of the standings to make a run at the postseason, and with that often comes a player who's most responsible for that.
The Blue Jackets are one of those teams, and while new coach Rick Bowness's arrival helped turn them around immediately, the play of defenseman Zach Werenski has provided the rock-solid foundation for their turnaround.
Werenski is having another elite season on the blue line. He's second in scoring among defensemen with 68 points in 59 games. Despite missing seven games, he trails only Edmonton Oilers defenseman Evan Bouchard and is just ahead of Cale Makar, Quinn Hughes, and Lane Hutson in the defensive scoring race. All of the other defensemen are on teams currently in a playoff spot, while Columbus is one point back of the wild card and two behind the New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins for second and third in the Metropolitan Division.
Werenski has that standing in the league, but he's also the Blue Jackets' leading scorer, and his 20 goals are second on the team behind Kirill Marchenko (25). He was a Norris finalist a year ago, and if the Jackets fight their way back and into the playoffs, he could land on a lot more MVP ballots as well.
8. Andrei Vasilevskiy, Tampa Bay Lightning
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To be a goalie and land on the MVP list, you have to do extraordinary things and/or be so much better than your contemporaries that it alters how the field is viewed. This is what led Connor Hellebuyck to win the Hart Trophy last year and what allows Andrei Vasilevskiy to be in the conversation this season.
Vasilevskiy is the odds-on favorite to win the Vezina Trophy this season. His .914 save percentage trails only Scott Wedgewood (.918), but he's started 10 more games than the Colorado Avalanche goalie. His 30 wins are tied with Utah's Karel Vejmelka for the league lead, and his 2.30 goals-against average is third in the league. Playing goalie is the most demanding position for many reasons, but Vasilevskiy playing at this level so often is incredible.
It also helps that Vasilevskiy's play helped bring Tampa Bay back to the top of the Eastern Conference standings. Don't let their current funk dissuade you about the Lightning or their play; they've been one of the best teams all year, and without Vasilevskiy, it's hard to believe that would be the case.
7. Rasmus Dahlin, Buffalo Sabres
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There are many reasons the Sabres have surged to the top of the Eastern Conference standings.
Lindy Ruff's coaching, Tage Thompson's offensive prowess, Rasmus Dahlin's play on the blue line, and Alex Lyon and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen's strong play in goal stand out. If someone is going to carry the MVP torch for them, picking between Dahlin and Thompson is tough, but Dahlin's excellence all-around gets him the spot.
Dahlin is sixth in the NHL in scoring among defensemen with 60 points in 63 games. He's second on the Sabres in points behind Thompson while having played four fewer games than his American teammate. He drives possession for Buffalo and leads their rushes up the ice. He's also become a major pain to play against for his sneaky physical play that drives opponents bonkers.
He's had a hellish year with his personal life, and yet he's playing some of the best hockey of his career and on the precipice of leading the Sabres back to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2011.
6. Kirill Kaprizov, Minnesota Wild
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It was easy for the Minnesota Wild to get lost in the pack in the Central Division thanks to the Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars, but the Wild are right there on their heels and are among the best teams in the league.
Adding Quinn Hughes helped shine a spotlight on them, and that added attention rightfully brought more focus on how incredible Kirill Kaprizov is.
Kaprizov has been an elite player for years now and one of the league's top scorers. With Hughes on the team and Matt Boldy taking a huge step this season, he no longer has to do all the heavy lifting himself. He's long been capable of incredible highlight reel goals and efforts, and now that the Wild are in an even better place in the standings, it's time for Kaprizov to earn more recognition.
There are plenty of arguments to be made for Boldy or Hughes to be in this position for MVP. Boldy is excellent in two-way play and Hughes is arguably the best defenseman in the league which puts him in the MVP discussion anyway, but if the Wild are going to go far in the postseason (something that will be immediately difficult given they'll have to play Dallas or Colorado in the opening round most likely) they'll need Kaprizov to be a difference maker against those teams' elite offensive players.
5. Jason Robertson, Dallas Stars
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It's hard to find a bright side to Jason Robertson being snubbed for Team USA's Olympic roster, but if he were to find a way to win the Hart Trophy, that would turn into quite the tale.
The Dallas Stars are one of the best teams in the NHL for a lot of reasons, but arguably the biggest one is Robertson's performance this season. He's tied for eighth in the league in points (79), and his 36 goals tie him for sixth in the league with teammate Wyatt Johnston. Robertson leads the Stars in scoring just ahead of Johnston (73) and Mikko Rantanen (69 in 54 games).
Robertson's consistency this season helped strengthen his case to be on the American roster in Milan, and although that didn't happen, a well-rested Robertson could help push Dallas beyond the Western Conference Final after falling short in that round the past three seasons. Still, the Stars have the second-best record in the league, and they've closed in on the Colorado Avalanche for the lead in the Central Division and the NHL. A lot of that credit belongs to their forward group led by Robertson.
4. Macklin Celebrini, San Jose Sharks
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No one out there considered the San Jose Sharks a contender for the Stanley Cup Playoffs this year, given how young the team is, but no one figured that Macklin Celebrini would skyrocket to become one of the NHL's elite scorers at 19 years old either.
The Sharks are challenging for a spot in the playoffs almost solely because of Celebrini's atomic breakout season. He's fifth in the league in scoring with 95 points and averaging nearly 1.5 points per game (1.46 to be exact). That kind of rate ranks him right there with Edmonton's Leon Draisaitl currently and puts him in the conversation with Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby for what he's doing at such a young age.
It sounds a little insulting to say the Sharks are a one-player team because of what Celebrini is doing, but he's also 50 points ahead of Will Smith, who's second on the team in scoring. Fortunately, the Sharks have a pile of players with 40 or more points behind the young phenom, so they've got enough offense to stay in the hunt for the playoffs (they're one point back of Seattle for the second wild card as of this writing), but with Celebrini pushing the Sharks into the playoff picture now, he's also forcing their rebuild to keep pace with what he's doing.
If the Sharks make the playoffs, it's impossible to not consider Celebrini for MVP.
3. Connor McDavid, Edmonton Oilers
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Like clockwork, Connor McDavid is flexing his offensive might on the rest of the league and dragging the Edmonton Oilers into the playoffs despite their myriad issues.
McDavid leads the league in scoring with 114 points, five more than Nathan MacKinnon. He's fifth in goals (37), first in assists (77), and his 46 points on the power play lead the league by four, ahead of teammate Leon Draisaitl. His 1.68 points per game are third behind Nikita Kucherov and MacKinnon, and most importantly, he has the Oilers within two points of the Pacific Division lead.
It's always dramatic in Edmonton, but McDavid's steady excellence allows him to do his part to raise the bar for the rest of the team when everything else is fraught with issues. As he goes, so do the Oilers, and fortunately for them, McDavid is the best offensive talent in the league, hands down.
McDavid's play alone makes him a worthy MVP candidate, and if the Oilers nosed out Anaheim, Vegas, Seattle, and San Jose for the Pacific crown, it's hard to argue against him winning the award. That said, the low bar to achieve that top spot in the division does the hardest work to argue against it.
2. Nikita Kucherov, Tampa Bay Lightning
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We said a lot of kind and accurate things about Andrei Vasilevskiy's play being a vital reason why the Lightning have been so successful this season, but the real leader in Tampa Bay is Nikita Kucherov.
Kucherov is third in the league in scoring with 106 points and has the best points per game rate in the NHL at 1.76. A player creeping even that close to two points per game is the kind of thing we used to see in the 1980s all the time, and in recent years, it came from guys like Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid. Watching Kucherov do that in Tampa Bay this season is genuinely special.
With 34 goals and 72 assists (second most in the league), Kucherov is a threat with and without the puck alike, and he's the guy that makes it all go. He has 37 more points than Jake Guentzel, who's second on the team, but what he's doing isn't quite like what Macklin Celebrini is doing in San Jose.
Kucherov's other high-scoring teammates--Brayden Point, Anthony Cirelli, and Victor Hedman--have dealt with injuries throughout the year, which put the onus on Kucherov to step up his game, and boy, has he ever. He won MVP in 2019, and he's been in the running a few times again since, but this season might be his best yet.
1. Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado Avalanche
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We know the Avalanche have cooled off a bit in the second half, but MacKinnon is still proving to be incredible this season. His 109 points in 64 games played equate to 1.70 points per game, the second-best mark in the league behind Nikita Kucherov. He's the best player on the best team in the league, and if you don't think that carries a lot of weight, we don't know what to tell you.
On top of all those stats, MacKinnon also leads the league in goals with 44. Sure, it's easy to pile up points when you score all the goals, but playing on a team with Cale Makar and Martin Nečas means getting to pile up assists as well.
If you wanted to get rude about the MVP argument, you could point out how having those players somehow makes MacKinnon less valuable, but let's get real here, he's the No. 1 guy there this season, and it's not close.
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