Should Leon Draisaitl finish second to Connor McDavid in Hart Trophy voting?

So, here’s a question that NHL trophy voters will have to wrestle with when they fill out their ballots next week.

Who do you slot behind the Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid in the Hart Trophy race, as the player judged to be most valuable to his own team?

The expectation is that McDavid will not only win the Hart, but could and should be a unanimous choice, just as he was in 2021. It’s only happened twice in the 99-year history of the award that a player has won the Hart unanimously (Wayne Gretzky was the other in 1981-82. The fact that it could happen again with McDavid in such a short period of time speaks to the kind of season he’s had and the impact on the Oilers, who also happen to be the hottest team in the NHL right now.

Of course, hockey is the ultimate team sport and McDavid’s been dominant in other years, without his team having anywhere near the results they’re having now. One reason is the play of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins who, this week, became the third Oiler to cross the 100-point threshold. That doesn’t happen much either — only 14 times in the past has a team ever managed three 100-point players.

The third Oiler to reach that plateau is Leon Draisaitl, and here’s where it gets interesting. Even if McDavid is going to be the runaway Hart winner, voters are obliged to list five names on their ballots. It’s fair to predict that it’ll be a scattershot vote, when it comes to ranking the players ranked two-to-five behind McDavid.

Though there is a case to be made for choosing Draisaitl that’s traditionally a hard sell for voters. You need to go back to 1971 to find the last time a pair of teammates ran first and second in the Hart Trophy balloting. That was Bobby Orr at No. 1, Phil Esposito at No. 2 with Bobby Hull, third, but miles behind in the voting.

There was a year, 1955, when a pair of Maple Leafs went first and second – Ted Kennedy and goalie Harry Lumley – but the last time a pair of forwards from the same team were No. 1 and No. 2 in the Hart voting was back in 1945 with Montreal Canadiens’ Elmer Lach and Rocket Richard.

That was the days of the Original Six, so a far different competition than the current 32-team iteration of the NHL.

Draisaitl has been on fire of late, as the Oilers have surged up the standings. They have won six in a row, are 9-0-1 in the last 10 and have points in 12 consecutive games, after winning a pair of games back-to-back in Southern California, including a Tuesday victory over their likely first-round opponent, Los Angeles. Draisaitl had three points in the win over the Kings, which pushed a personal point streak to 13 games, in which he has scored 27 points in total. And while McDavid has a 25-point lead over Draisaitil in the scoring race (148 to 123), Draisaitl has created a 15-point cushion over third-place Nikita Kucherov.

The case against Draisaitl is going to be mostly focused on the fact that he is feasting on the Oilers’ power play. He is up to 31…