It’s always a solid bet that the Edmonton Oilers are going to be well-represented at the NHL Awards in the summer.
That’s not just because the team boasts the game’s top player in Connor McDavid, a perennial favourite to lead the league in scoring and be voted as the Most Valuable Player. It’s also because of Leon Draisaitl, who has a Hart Trophy, Art Ross Trophy, and Ted Lindsay Award to his name.
Draisaitl won all three of those awards after scoring 43 goals and 110 points over 71 games during the 2019-20 season. At the middle point of the 2024-25 season, it looks like he could again earn himself multiple pieces of hardware. The German pivot leads the NHL with 31 goals in 42 games and his 64 points are only a few back of Nathan MacKinnon for the league lead.
Back in 2019-20, Draisaitl finished first in Hart Trophy voting with 1,309 points, edging out MacKinnon, who earned 1,162 points. There was some criticism over Draisaitl winning the Hart that season given how much of his production came on the power play and his subpar defensive results.
That hasn’t been the case this year. Adding to Draisaitl’s impressive season is the fact he leads the league with 24 even-strength goals, nine game-winning goals, and a plus-26 rating, with the latter indicating how far his two-way game has come over the years.
Over at Canucks Army, managing editor David Quadrelli polled 11 individuals from the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association who will be voting in the NHL Awards later this year. Draisaitl was the unanimous Hart Trophy winner, earning a first-place vote from all writers.
In an effort to establish Vancouver Canucks captain Quinn Hughes’ current place in the NHL’s Hart Trophy conversation, we asked 11 NHL Awards voters to cast their ballot at the halfway point of the season.To show the data, we are going to indicate the number of first, second, third, fourth, and fifth place votes that each player got. First-place votes are worth five points, second-place four, third-place three, fourth-place two, and fifth-place one. Here are the results of our anonymous survey among actual NHL Awards voters.1st: Leon Draisaitl — 11-0-0-0-0 (55 points)
2nd: Nathan MacKinnon — 0-7-3-0-0 (37 points)
3rd: Quinn Hughes — 0-2-5-2-1 (28 points)
4th: Connor Hellebuyck — 0-2-3-4-0 (25 points)
5th: Kirill Kaprizov — 0-0-1-0-6 (9 points)Other players receiving votes (under 5 total points): Nikita Kucherov, Cale Makar, Jack Eichel, and Zach Werenski.
