Toronto Maple Leafs: Why Auston Matthews Is the Hart Trophy Favorite

The Toronto Maple Leafs fans were denied a chance to watch the best two players in the world go head to head last night.

The Toronto Maple Leafs probably won the game (this was written beforehand) but if they did, they did it without Auston Matthews, the NHL’s current Hart Trophy favorite.

Now, yesterday, after saying as much, many people disagreed and said that they felt that Connor McDavid was still the front runner.  Now, that is a reasonable thing to think because not only does the NHL MVP almost always go to the points leader, but the Hart Trophy is stupidly not always for the NHL’s best player.

Some voters prefer to view it as the “player most valuable to his team” which has historically denied players the MVP trophy they deserved in favor of lesser players who didn’t have such good teammates, or whose team failed to make the playoffs or whatever.

This ridiculous phenomenon already denied Connor McDavid at least one, possibly two MVP awards so far in his young career.  Once he was by far the NHL’s best player but since his GM failed to build a team around him, he was denied the award for best player, even though everyone knew he was the best player.  Then last year, he took all the hardest defenders in the NHL off Leon Draisaitl’s back and since Leon finished with the most points he got awarded.

The same thing might happen this year: Matthews will be the best player, and McDavid will get the Art Ross and get the MVP because of it.  So if you are making a bet on who will get the trophy, bet on McDavid.  If you are interesting in stating who the best player in the NHL is this year so far, say Auston Matthews, because it isn’t even really close.

Auston Matthews and the Hart Trophy

Here is a head to head comparison of Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid’s 5v5 stats.  A lot of people ask me why we ignore the power play, and the reason is because 5v5 is more repeatable.   Also, about 80% is played in that game state, and so the sample size is always going to be larger, and subsequently there will be less of a chance of one or two wacky games skewing the whole analysis.  5v5 stats give a better picture of who is playing well and how they will play in the future.  An NHL team that does good at 5v5 and has a bad powerplay will always do better than a bad 5v5 team with a good PP, and as such, 5v5 goals help teams win more than PP goals do.

Bottom line: if want to compare to players in the fairest way possible, you have to put more weight on 5v5 stats.

Matthews has 11 5v5 goals, while McDavid has 5.  Matthews has one more 5v5 point in two less games.  McDavid may have nine more points overall (in two more games) but Matthews has on more 5v5 point.

Overall, if we look at points per hour we can see this illuminated a little bit better.  There are 84 NHL forwards who have played a minimum of 250 minutes 5v5.  The one who scores the most is MItch Marner with 3.39 points per 60.  Jordan Kyrou is second, Auston Matthews third, and Connor McDavid seventh.

3.24 to 2.85 points per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice-time, in Matthews’ favor.

Matthtews is leading McDavid in points, points per minute and goals 5v5, while also leading in all-situation goals. I personally think goals should have more weight than assists, so the very fact that Matthews is the one actually scoring the goals should put him ahead.

Remember, while overall points tend to get the most attention, Matthews is leading in three of the four most important categories. 1) 5v5 points 2) 5v5 goals 3) Total Goals.

On-Ice Stats

On-ice stats are a good way to get a look at a player’s overall impact because they track how the whole team does when each player is on the ice. Each number is expressed as a percentage of the total.

Puck Possession AKA Corsi:  Matthews 52% McDavid 54%

Shots : Matthews 51%  McDavid 55%

Scoring Chances: Matthews 59% McDavid 58%

Goals: Matthews  64%  McDavid 57%

Expected Goals: Matthews 56% McDavid 61%

Now, a couple of things about these stats:

1) Normally, if a players with worse on-ice stats has more points than a player who is getting better stats, and if both of those players played a similar role, I would say that the player with the least amount of points but the better on-ice stats is just getting less lucky and is actually playing better.

In this case, and I’m sorry if it looks like I’m just being biased, but in this case the fact is that Auston Matthews is quite capable of outperforming his averages.  He is the best shooter in the NHL and his 20% individual shooting percentage isn’t just him getting lucky.  I mean, he’s getting a bit lucky, but no more lucky than McDavid getting five power-play points in a single game against Ottawa. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).

2) All of these publicly available stats are based on shot attempts.  The Leafs, especially Matthews and Marner,  often hold the puck and look for great opportunities rather than take a “there’s no such thing as a bad shot” approach to the game that most of the rest of the NHL takes.  In their case, I do not think shot-attempts are a very good proxy for puck possession.

This may be just a figment of my own confirmation bias, but it’s why I think that Matthews, who has more 5v5 production than Connor McDavid, is the NHL’s best player right now.