NHL Insider believes Matthews is currently outplaying McDavid, could be named league's MVP
TSN's Chris Johnston made a pretty bold statement on Leafs Lunch on Friday afternoon, suggesting that neither Leon Draisaitl nor Connor McDavid are the favourites to win the Hart Memorial Trophy this season.
So if (arguably) the two best players in the NHL are not the frontrunners for the prestigious award, who does Johnston think leads the race at this point in the season? Well, the two leading candidates in CJ's mind are Auston Matthews and Igor Shesterkin.
Listen. I have nothing against Igor Shesterkin. He's without a doubt one of the league's top goaltenders. He's shown that this season. The Rangers' record with him vs the Rangers' record without him tells the whole story.
The Russian netminder has posted a 25-5-3 record through 33 games this season, posting the best save percentage in the league among starting goaltenders with a .940 SV%. He's also nipping at Ville Husso's heels for the league's best GAA. Husso is currently sitting at 1.97, with Shesterkin owning a 1.98 GAA.
All that said, Auston Matthews is the current Hart Trophy frontrunner. Full stop. Matthews has scored 29 goals in his last 32 games. That type of goal production in the modern NHL is almost unheard of. He leads the league in goals with 36, despite playing less games than all of his competitors.
The Hart Memorial Trophy is awarded to the "player judged most valuable to his team". With the Rangers, yes Shesterkin is important, but there are a number of reasons why they are where they are right now. Chris Kreider having scored 34 goals this season is an obvious one. There's just nothing in Kreider's scoring history to indicate that he will be able to keep up this type of production and, when the well dries up, the Rangers will be relying on someone else to pick things up from an offensive perspective.
For the Leafs, Matthews is the guy. Matthews is the most valuable player to his team. He's the best offensive forward and he's likely the best defensive forward in the top six. It's arguable that nobody on the team has more of an impact on the result of any given game than Auston Matthews does. Plus there's also THIS.
Had Matthews been able to play a full 82-game season, he'd be flirting with 110 points. From just a goal scoring standpoint, Matthews is scoring at a .75 goals per game. That's a 61.5-goal pace over 82 games. It hasn't been done since Steven Stamkos hit 60 in 2011-2012.
For me, Matthews is the obvious choice. Granted, there's still 31 games to play, but I think at this point, Matthews is the guy to beat, and not just for the Hart. Also for the Rocket Richard Trophy and potentially even the Frank J. Selke Trophy as well.
