Hart vs. Lindsay: Which matters more?

[Kin]

So something I've thought about recently is the extent to which we weigh the prestige of awards in the NHL and specifically about the Hart vs. the Lindsay. Growing up, the Hart was always the big deal. The Lindsay, or I guess Pearson to avoid any anachronism, was sort of like "hey cute, the NHLPA gives out an award too".

Generally I have very little time for any sort of "he played the game, you didn't" appeals to authority and the awards that the GM's vote on are as screwy as anything but lately I think I've started to flip a little in terms of which award matters more.

I know that there will be people who will try and turn this into a semantic argument, say that the Hart rewards "value" and the Lindsay "being outstanding" or somesuch but I think that's meaningless. Partially because I think the players have done a much better job than the writers at identifying value. I think they've done this, by the way, simply by sticking to two central ideas that are sort of undeniable:

A) A goal is more valuable important than an assist, within reason
B) Narrative shouldn't enter into the equation.

The first is simple and in cases where there've been splits between the players and the voters in the last 15 years, the players have almost always sided with the goal scorer. For example

In 09-10 Henrik Sedin(Hart) scored 29 goals, 112 points. Alex Ovechkin(Lindsay) scored 50 goals, 109 points.

In 05-06 Joe Thornton(Hart) scored 29 goals and 125 points. Jaromir Jagr(Lindsay) scored 54 and 123.

In 02-03 Peter Forsberg(Hart) scored 29 goals(see a theme?) and 106 points, Markus Naslund(Lindsay) scored 48 goals and 104 points.

Unless you're of the opinion that there's virtually no difference between goals and assists in terms of value/import, it's pretty hard to justify any of the writer's choices here.

There were two cases where the players chose to honor a player who scored fewer goals than the Hart winner but those were cases of relatively minor differences(Corey Perry scoring 9 more goals than Daniel Sedin who scored 6 more points) and choosing to honor Sidney Crosby scoring 15 goals in 36 games instead of Ovechkin's 32 in 48. Again, seems pretty hard to argue with either.

But then it comes to the question of narrative and, I think, unquestionably it's hard to look at the writer's choice for the Hart trophy and not see a bunch of choices where the focus was less on a player's contribution to his team and more on the writer's wanting to tell a particular story. Daniel Sedin won the Hart, I think at least in part, because Ovechkin had won the award twice in a row and there's nothing interesting about "Ovechkin is still the best player in the league". Likewise, it's hard to see the Forsberg choice as not being one about legacy. He'd been one of the best players in the league for 10 years without a major award and it felt at the time like it was "his turn". Likewise, it's hard not to read some degree of narrative interpretation for the writer's preference for the unselfish assist over the showboating goal.

But the clear one that sticks out in that regard is Jagr vs. Thornton. It's pretty hard to argue that Jagr wasn't the better player that year. 25 goals is not a minor difference. So what tipped it Thornton's way?

Well, he got traded. And once he got traded the San Jose Sharks improved. Sort of. They'd been a 104 point team the year before the lockout. The year they traded for Thornton they ended up with 99 points.

But they'd been slumping when they made the trade and they got better afterwards. A lot of people like to point to this as the difference between being "outstanding" and "being valuable". "Look how much Thornton turned that team around!" they say. Isn't that what we mean when we say value?

But no, it really can't be. Thornton was one of the top 3 players in the league last year. The Sharks gave up really next to nothing to get him. Drop a top 3 player onto any team without losing much and that team will improve because that player is a good hockey player. If Jagr had been traded elsewhere for nothing he'd have helped that team to.

By giving Thornton that award and for the fairly apparent reasons they did, it's essentially a statement that what makes a hockey player valuable isn't what he does on the ice, it's the situation he's in. The trade, in that view, made Thornton a more valuable player. That's nonsense. A player is not less valuable because his team didn't want to trade him away for pennies on the dollar. That's not just a misreading of the concept of value value, that's turning it on its head.

TL: dr? The Hart, because of its association with hockey writers, has diminished as an important award. We should care more about the Lindsay, particularly to get an accurate reflection of who contributed the most value to his hockey team.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

You could say that the players put more of an emphasis on goals over assists, but I wonder if they also maybe put too much of an emphasis on points in general. Obviously that's not the only part of a players game.

Look at Thornton vs. Jagr that year. Points were similar, Jagr had the edge in goals. But beyond the offensive contributions, Thornton was also one of San Jose's primary penalty killers. Jagr played less than 28 minutes on the penalty kill for the Rangers all season. So in general Thornton would likely have had quite the edge in defensive play. He also plays the more important position.

The same could also somewhat be said about your other 2 examples. In Sedin and Forsberg the media went with the centre over the winger. Those two didn't kill penalties like Thornton did, but they would have had to handle much more defensive responsibilities than Ovechkin and Naslund would have. I think it's fair to take that type of information into account when trying to judge the best players.

 

[Kin]

You could say that the players put more of an emphasis on goals over assists, but I wonder if they also maybe put too much of an emphasis on points in general. Obviously that's not the only part of a players game.

Look at Thornton vs. Jagr that year. Points were similar, Jagr had the edge in goals. But beyond the offensive contributions, Thornton was also one of San Jose's primary penalty killers. Jagr played less than 28 minutes on the penalty kill for the Rangers all season. So in general Thornton would likely have had quite the edge in defensive play. He also plays the more important position.

It's a fair point and one that I thought about but in general I tend to dismiss it as being somewhat incidental in a case like this one where San Jose had a pretty bad penalty kill all year(23rd) whereas the Rangers had a pretty good one(10th).

I think because of that it's fair to question if Thornton was killing penalties out of necessity and whether or not he was actually doing it well. If you look at Thornton's career that's the only year he ever really came anywhere close to playing 2 minutes a night on the PK so I do question how much real value there is in playing badly on the penalty kill even though I admit it makes a player somewhat more versatile.