NHL Art Ross Race: Oilers' McDavid Can Boost Odds of a Hart Trophy Repeat With Scoring Title

When Kris Knoblauch was introduced as the Edmonton Oilers' new coach on Nov. 12, 2023, Connor McDavid sat 131st in the NHL scoring race, with 10 points in 11 games.

After picking up a pair of assists in the Oilers' 6-5 overtime loss to the Boston Bruins on Wednesday, McDavid is now third. Since Knoblauch's arrival, the Oilers have gone 30-9-1 and are now comfortably in a playoff spot. And while McDavid would be the first to tell you that Edmonton's bounce-back has been a full team effort, the numbers suggest he is leading the charge.

In the 40 games of the Knoblauch era, McDavid has 75 points or 1.88 points per game. The next-most-productive Oiler is Leon Draisaitl, at 53.

Now, McDavid is surging, while Nikita Kucherov, Nathan MacKinnon and David Pastrnak are slowing down. It's very possible that he could re-claim No. 1 before the regular season wraps on April 18. 

On Wednesday, my colleague Adam Proteau made the case for why McDavid could be moving toward front-runner status for his fourth career Hart Trophy. 

If he's going after another MVP award, he had better snag the scoring title along the way. 

The two frequently go hand-in-hand. In the past decade, the Hart has been handed out to the Art Ross winner seven times — and in 2017, 2021 and 2023, that player was McDavid. 

He's one of just three active players with multiple Hart wins. The others are Alex Ovechkin, also with three (2008, 2009 and 2013) and Sidney Crosby with two (2007 and 2014).

Back in 2015, Carey Price snagged a once-in-a-generation Hart for the goalie guild after his phenomenal year. League scoring also happened to be at record low levels that year: Jamie Benn won the 2015 Art Ross with just 87 points and didn't even earn a single top-three Hart vote.

There have also been two seasons where McDavid finished with the most points and was not voted the Hart winner by the members of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association. 

In 2018, he hit a then-career-high of 108 points, but Edmonton missed the playoffs. He finished fifth in the Hart voting, and then-New Jersey Devils forward Taylor Hall took home the award.

Then in 2022, McDavid got all the way to 123 points but finished a distant second to Auston Matthews, who became the NHL's first 60-goal scorer since Steven Stamkos in 2011-12.

McDavid replied with 64 goals last season and 153 points — the most since Mario Lemieux hit 161 back in 1995-96. And David Pastrnak also got to 61. 

This year, Matthews is already at 51 and might not need to break a sweat to get to 70. That has him back in the Hart hunt again on a Toronto Maple Leafs team that has struggled in net and on the back end but looks to be safe in a playoff spot thanks to a 6-1-0 run in their last seven games.

There's not much he can do about Matthews. But if McDavid wants to take a run at becoming the first back-to-back Hart winner since young Ovi, Step 1 will be to reel in Kucherov and MacKinnon and keep Pastrnak at bay.

Here's why momentum is on his side:

As the Tampa Bay Lightning have cooled off since the NHL All-Star Break, so has he. In both November and January, Kucherov tallied a cool two points per game, and in December, he was at 1.57. 

But after his disastrous showing in the All-Star Skills competition, Kucherov has lost his mojo. He has just nine points in seven games since the break or 1.29 points per game. If that pace holds up for the rest of the year, he'll add another 32 points to get to 126 — two shy of his Art Ross/Hart double-dip in 2018-19.

After hitting a career-high 111 points last season, MacKinnon looks poised to easily eclipse that number. With 55 points in 27 games through December and January, the 28-year-old spent two full months producing at better than two points a game. 

He has also been a bit flat since the All-Star Break by his standards, with eight points in eight games. If that continues, he'll add another 25 points by the end of the year, for 117 in total. That said, his home point-scoring streak is now up to 27 games.

McDavid now has just seven points to make up on MacKinnon and nine on Kucherov. He has also gotten hotter as the year has gone on, and even though the Oilers' winning streak has now come to a close, he still has 18 points in eight February games.

The Oilers have also played fewer games than the Lightning or Avalanche. If McDavid keeps up his 2.25 points per game over Edmonton's 29 remaining games, he can add another 65 points.

That would get him to a tidy 150 for the year — three points shy of last year's bar but still an extraordinary number considering the head start he gave the rest of the field.

After that Bruins/Oilers barnburner on Wednesday night, let's keep Pastrnak in this conversation as well. He's arguably the only other player with a chance at the Art Ross title. 

Like MacKinnon, he hasn't won before, and also like MacKinnon, he hit a new career high last season, in his case with 113 points.

Pastrnak's best month this season was January, when he had 11 goals and 11 assists for 22 points in 14 games. And while he put up two points in Edmonton on Wednesday and has only been held pointless once in February, he still has just 10 points in eight games this month. 

If he keeps up that pace for the Bruins' last 25 games, he'll add another 31 points to his total. That would leave him tied with last season, at 113, but still behind the other contenders.

These projections are grounded in recent trends, but of course, any of these players could end up being hotter or colder over the final two months of the year. 

At this point, though, it certainly looks like the race for the Art Ross Trophy should come down to these four names. And right now, it's McDavid's to lose.