He’s already won the Art Ross Trophy, the Ted Lindsay Award and is the cover athlete for EA Sports’ NHL 18. Now, Connor McDavid has become the first Edmonton Oiler since Mark Messier in 1990 to take home the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player.
McDavid joins the above mentioned Messier (’90) and Wayne Gretzky (’80, ’81, ’82, ’83, ’84, ’85, ’86, ’87) as the only winners of the award in franchise history. He’s also the second Oiler ever, joining Wayne Gretzky, to win all three awards (Art Ross, Hart, Lindsay) in the same season.
It was a tough debate between McDavid, Sidney Crosby and Sergei Bobrovsky, but I believe the voters got this right. It’s a regular season award, and without McDavid the Oilers are not in the playoffs in 2017. He is, in my mind, the most valuable player to his team in the entire NHL.
He led the league in points by eleven on Crosby, and had the most even strength points in the NHL with 71. He was, by all accounts, the best offensive player in the NHL this season and was seemingly dynamic on every shift. He was the best and was the most valuable.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a huge honor for McDavid. Being the MVP of the NHL is something that is extremely difficult to accomplish and takes one heck of a campaign to top the other nominees. To be in the same sentence as guys like Crosby, Kane, Ovechkin, and Malkin is a huge accomplishment for someone as young as McDavid.
I said this earlier tonight in my post when McDavid won the Lindsay Award, but this is also a big moment for the Edmonton Oilers. It proves that this team is officially back and once again relevant in the NHL. Having a player like McDavid makes them a premiere franchise in the league and should give them a huge boost going forward.
After just two seasons in the NHL, Connor McDavid has collected a very impressive amount of hardware. Tonight’s claiming of the Art Ross, Hart and Lindsay Awards proves that the Oilers have one of the true premiere players in the NHL.
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