Your argument makes no sense. If he's the best player in the league and on an average team, then he's the most valuable to his team. Toronto is still a playoff team without Matthew's, Florida is still a playoff team without Huberdeau. Shesterkin has been playing poorly for month. McDavid has been the best player in the league all season long and recently has taken his game to a new level - he's deserves the Hart more than any other player in the league

My ballot:

T1. Matthews, McDavid
3. Gaudreau
4. Kaprizov
T5. Shesterkin, Josi, Makar

I personally have the Mathews-McDavid argument down to a 50-50 right now. The way the PHWA handles the other awards suggests to me that because Josi and Shesterkin are almost locks for the Norris and Vezina they'll likely be "out" in Hart voting. Phenomenal team-saving seasons for sure but there be offensive GIANTS at the top of the Hart ballot this season. I'm giving a slight edge to Matthews right now but if McDavid breaks 130 points and the Oilers get home-ice advantage over the Kings for the first round of the playoffs, McDavid will win it. I don't believe Draisaitl is a top-5 Hart candidate this season but he easily crack the top-10.

That's just ignorance talking. McDavid and Draisaitl have been together less than 25% of the time at 5v5, how does that compare with Matthews and Marner? Draisaitl plays more minutes against Elite players than any other forward in the league not named Anze Kopitar, he takes more faceoffs than any other player and takes more defensive zone faceoffs than every other top player, and it's not close. He kills penalties. He does everything. If I were starting a team and could only pick one of Matthews or Draisaitl, it would be the big German.

Off of the power play, McDavid and Draisaitl have only spent somewhere in the ballpark of 25% of their icetime together. It's genuinely a false narrative. In contrast, Matthews spends about 60% of his icetime with Marner and Gaudreau about 88% of his TOI with Tkachuk.

I do fully think that the "but muh teammates" argument is incredibly stupid: it takes a great player to play with the very best at the level that any of the names I mentioned above do. It should hold zero bearing on the conversation at hand.

sure, but remove draisatl, they are probably not a playoff team too. so what does that tell you?

edit : i think we just disagree on what the trophy should reward. you can have your opinion about it and its fine. im not here to attack the players aswelll. but to me, if you have 2 top 5 hart candidate, then neither deserve it in my opinion. doesnt mean that they might not be the best players in the league

i mean, sure its a small sample, but its better to judge on small sample than on things that never happened. but i agree.we should not put too much weight on it.

i would implore you not to die on the hill of two natural centres playing together a lot

And your team would be worse.

25% is still very significant and I am not arguing that McDavid isn't the best or deserving of the Hart. He is. I am not even arguing Matthews deserves it, I don't think he does. I just think Draisaitl gets a tonne of credit for McDavid's work. Like I said no one game plans for Draisaitl, they game plan for McDavid. I'd like to see someone dive into Draisaitl's stats this year and see how many of his points came with either McDavid on the ice, or where McDavid assists or scores the goal. A quarter of their time together amounts to a lot more than a quarter of his points I would wager.

They do in fact play together a lot. As people have mentioned, around a quarter of their time together at 5v5 plus all their PP time. If it was 5% of the time I wouldn't be thinking this but a quarter is a big chunk of change.

"no one game plans for a guy with 100 points"

You'd lose that bet - unless 2% is "a lot".
25% on ice together at 5v5.
27% of Draisaitl's 5v5 points came with McDavid on the ice.
16% of Draisaitl's 5v5 goals came with McDavid on the ice.

Draisaitl doesn't get near enough credit for how good he is. Consider this: only 4 active players have scored 50 goals and 50 assists in the same season:

Ovechkin (3 times)
Draisaitl (twice)
Crosby (once)
Malkin (once)

Never mind that Draisaitl was on pace to do it in 2019-20 when COVID shut down the season.

But he's just a product of McDavid to you. Sad.

NaturalStatTrick has this function. All of the numbers used here are at even strength:

Draisaitl and McDavid have been on the ice together for 17 goals for and 11 goals against this season. GF% of 54.84%.

McDavid has been on the ice for 44 goals for and 31 goals against WITHOUT Draisaitl. GF% of 58.67%.

Draisaitl has been on the ice for 47 goals for and 36 goals against WITHOUT McDavid. GF% of 56.63%.

You can feel free to quit moving the goalposts of your argument now. Regardless of whether or not you want to consider 25% of their ice time as significant (it's not, this is blatantly stupid), the Oilers score at essentially the same rate with both Draisaitl and McDavid on the ice as they do with only one of them on the ice. I'm not going to bother figuring out the distribution of points that either player has with or without the other: Draisaitl has earned every right to be compared with the other elite players in the league. Opposing teams absolutely game plan for Draisaitl the same as they do McDavid, Matthews, MacKinnon, Crosby, et cetera.

This isn't even opinion or my bias as an Oilers fan: not wanting to see Draisaitl as the 100-point player that he is is just objectively wrong. The man is very much not a product of McDavid, he's just a great player.

They don't, you plan for McDavid and the PP

I don't really trust your stats gathering but I haven't taken a deep dive myself yet so I can't say for certain whether you are right or not

For sure, man.

If this is the kind of silliness we should come to expect from you then you're going to quickly find yourself out on your ass for trolling. You clearly aren't happy with any kind of narrative that isn't your own and we don't have a need or a want for it here.

You aren't going to be penalized for admitting that you're wrong in the face of overwhelming evidence. You will however be infracted for insisting upon being a moron.

Looking at these numbers, Draisaitl has almost half his points with McDavid on the ice. When you include PP and the 27% of his 5v5 scoring that came with him on the ice.

Here we go, someone disagrees and the insults start rolling. This site is filled with small people who want to bring others down. Rational thought just doesn't exist here.

Your posts in this thread only serve to highlight your closing sentence. It's beyond intellectually dishonest for you to claim to be the victim here: you've been given an actual database's worth of evidence to disprove your position and you've remained insistent that other users are untrustworthy. You've failed at every avenue to provide any evidence for your claims. Instead you've relied on an esoteric hand-waving performance and detracted from the topic at hand.

This site is filled with a lot of excellent users that actually want to have these conversations. Your experience has likely been different because of your unwillingness to participate in the kind of conversations and growth that feature in "rational thought". Take this as your final warning and correct the behaviour. The next one comes with infraction points.

So?

- Matthews plays with Marner at 5v5, add Tavares and Nylander for the PP.
- MacKinnon plays with Rantanen, Makar and Landeskog at 5v5, add Kadri for the PP.
- Crosby plays with Guentzel, Rust and Letang at 5v5, add Malkin for the PP.

See how this works? Your argument is just plain ignorant.

Settle down bud, no need to get mad. I am not saying he sucks, I just think his biggest asset is his offence which he absolutely benefits by playing a lot of minutes with the best player on the planet. I think to give Draisaitl credit over McDavid is insulting to McDavid.

Matthews absolutely benefits from playing with Marner. If he played with McDavid, I think he's score like it was the 80's and that is entirely because McDavid is insane!

I have covered this already. You guys are all just ridiculous

Yeah and everyone benefits from the best player on the ice. Marner certainly benefits from playing Matthews as does everyone else. That being said, the best guy on the ice when the Leafs play is Matthews. No debate and while I think Marner is also top shelf on his own, I don't think he would be scoring at a 40 goal and 120 point pace without Matthews. Draisaitl doesn't do what he does by himself, McDavid does. McDavid is going to score 100 points no matter what. He's just that good. Bunting is a point a game since he got on Matthews and Marner's line. Does that mean he's elite? Not even close, he's a 30 point player on the 3rd line.

All I am trying to say is Draisaitl isn't the 2nd best player on the planet, he's a very good player who gets a lot of extra accolades because he gets to play with McDavid. So to call him a Hart trophy candidate this season is outlandish. If he won, I would say it's a really bad win. Way more deserving players than him. McDavid for sure

I'm happy to report that you're wrong again. McDavid benefits more from playing with Draisaitl than the other way round:

McDavid with Draisaitl: 3.59 GF/60
McDavid w/o Draisaitl: 2.99
Draisaitl w/o McDavid: 3.30

Have a great day.