The NHL's Hart Trophy race in 2017-18 is far more convoluted than any of the landslides from the last five years. With a month to go in the regular season, no fewer than a half-dozen players can lay claim to "most valuable," a term that's open to interpretation, from Nikita Kucherov of the league-leading Lightning to Nathan MacKinnon, whose superhuman season has the Avalanche on the fringes of their first playoff berth since 2008. They might be the two front-runners.
Then there's Taylor Hall.
Hall's streak of consecutive games with a point ended at 26 Thursday in a 3-2 loss to the Jets, the first time the Devils star failed to reach the scoresheet in 2018. He had already pulled even with Patrick Kane (2015-16) for the longest in the last 22 years, and was he approaching even greater historical significance in the company of all-timers.
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Scoring streaks, even ones that last more than a quarter of a season, can be superficial, and in the context of an MVP race points are a fickle stat. They don't always paint a complete picture, and the order in which they're scored matters not. Kane and Mario Lemieux are the only players on that list to win the Hart the same year.
If nothing else, though, Hall's last 27 games raised the profile of his underrated candidacy. It served as a reminder of his critical role for the Devils and their fragile playoff hopes.
"I don't know if it's necessarily rallying around the streak," Devils coach John Hynes responded when asked about the influence of Hall's play on the rest of the team. "You have a really good player that's driven to make an impact. What it does is it drags people with him. I think it's inspirational when you have a guy who plays that hard every night. He's all in, whether it's practice, games, meetings, and that's very important."
All the while, the "best" vs. "most valuable" debate rages on.
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Connor McDavid is a poster child for the former. There's little argument McDavid is the best player in hockey, but with his Oilers toiling some 20 points out of a playoff spot, it's easy enough to make a case against a repeat Hart bid. Kucherov leads the league in scoring, but how much of it is a byproduct of playing on a loaded Lightning team? Evgeni Malkin, who outside of Hall has been maybe the hottest player since the calendar flipped, falls into the same predicament as Kucherov, surrounded by a ton of talent with the Penguins.
MacKinnon has the most points per game (1.34). Last season the Avalanche bottomed out with the worst season the NHL has seen in two decades. If they make the Stanley Cup playoffs in 2018, MacKinnon's case seems ironclad, but the postseason is a big if with five teams vying for the final two spots in the West, all within five points of one another.
And then there's the cluster of quieter candidates like Washington's Alex Ovechkin, Philadelphia's Claude Giroux and Calgary's Johnny Gaudreau, each having willed their teams into contention to varying degrees.
Hall enters the weekend just inside the NHL's top 10 in scoring, trailing almost everyone else in the Hart conversation. But his 74 points are 31 more than the Devils' second-leading scorer, Nico Hischier, and a career-high 30 goals account for 14.9 percent of the team's output this season. Of those 201 Devils goals, Hall has either scored or set up 36.8 percent. It's possible New Jersey will finish without another 20-goal scorer (Kyle Palmieri got his 18th Thursday).
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Hall also carries a 7.7 offensive point share, fifth in the league. He trails Malkin, Kucherov, MacKinnon and Ovechkin in that category, but you can argue all four benefit from a stronger supporting cast on offense. No one has done more with less than Hall.
New Jersey Devils scoring leaders this season:
— Dimitri Filipovic (@DimFilipovic) March 7, 2018
Nico Hischier - 41
Taylor Hall's last 26 games - 38
Taylor Hall's first 36 games - 36
Jesper Bratt - 34
Kyle Palmieri - 33
"You need some of your best players, your marquee players, to be the culture-drivers in how they play, how they work and the messages they promote," Hynes said of Hall. "He's done that, and I think our team feels as though when you have a guy going like that, everyone else has to get a higher level also, so that's part of being a very good player.
"You make other players better and that's what he's done."
New Jersey is only three points clear of the surging Panthers in the Eastern Conference wild-card race, and just one ahead of the Blue Jackets for the first wild-card spot.
The remaining 14 games will decide whether Hall has a realistic shot at winning the Hart. If voting trends are any indication, he might not even qualify as a finalist for the award, the criteria for which is still far from consensus. If it comes down to points, there's probably no hope.
Hall was planted beside the net on the Devils' second goal Thursday when Hischier cleaned up the scramble in front. Hall wasn't credited with a point, even though at first it appeared the puck may have grazed him. Had it, MVP chatter would have grown louder as the streak lived on for a 27th game. Instead, as is often the case in hockey, fate is left to one fluky bounce.
The lesson: A points streak elevated Hall's case for the Hart Trophy, but the final tally shouldn't come to define it.
