Connor McDavid has finished lower than second in Hart Trophy voting for the first time in five years.
He fell in the award voting Thursday night as Nathan MacKinnon took home the title, and Nikita Kucherov finished third.
It wasn’t as if McDavid was close in the voting, either. He received just one first-place vote, the fewest since the 2019-20 season when he finished fifth in voting. This year, he received 28 second-place votes, 86 third-place votes, 67 fourth-place votes and eight fifth-place votes.
He’s won the Hart Trophy three previous times in his career: first in 2016-17, second in 2020-21 and third in 2022-23. When he won the title in 2020-21, he received 100 first-place votes, becoming the second unanimous winner in NHL history, with Wayne Gretzky being the only other to do so.
McDavid had a tremendous 2023-24 campaign, scoring 32 goals, 100 assists and 132 points in 76 games this season, becoming the fourth player in NHL history to score so many assists in a season. He also became the sixth-player in NHL history to record seven 100-point seasons, and the first since Wayne Gretzky to record three straight 120-point campaigns.
Come the playoffs, McDavid’s game hit another level. While the Oilers fell as a whole in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, he earned his first-ever Conn Smythe Trophy for a playoff run that saw him score eight goals, 34 assists and 42 points in 25 games.
He broke a long-standing Gretzky record for most assists in a single playoff, with his 34 surpassing the record by three. McDavid would also become the third player behind Gretzky and Mario Lemieux to record 40 or more playoff points.
McDavid continues to be a game-breaker in the NHL, working his way into the conversation as one of the best players of all-time. According to hockeyviz.com, McDavid contributed offence at a 15 percent rate above league average and defence at a five percent rate above league average this season, providing value four times higher than that of an average first-line player.
