“Last season gave us one of the craziest races for the Hart Trophy we’d seen in years, with Nathan MacKinnon, Nikita Kucherov, Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews all putting up excellent cases for the award. This year, it’s not only even crazier, but it’s more wide open. As we still try to figure out what teams are made of, there are several cases for who’s been most valuable to their team.

However, it’s Kaprizov who has had the upper hand so far, receiving first-place votes from four of our seven panelists. The fact he sits just two points off of the league lead so far this season is a strong enough case for the Hart, but combine that with the Wild’s surprise start to the season, and it’s easy to see why he’s the frontrunner so far.”

“Wolf was well-received amongst our voters, as five of the seven gave him a first-place vote to make him the heavy favorite in the early parts of the season. It was quite close between him and Michkov, especially considering how vital both players have been to their new teams, but Wolf is already playing like an elite goaltender, and as a result, the Flames are much higher in the standings than many expected.”

“While Alekasander Barkov has slowly replaced Patrice Bergeron as the consistent top contender for the Selke, it’s his linemate in Reinhart that got the most love from us at the quarter mark. He only got one first-place vote, but he got five votes total from the six who voted on the Selke, which gave him the 32 points to edge him over Nico Hischier’s three first-place votes and 30 points.”

“It looks like Hughes’ bid to take back-to-back Norris trophies may fall just short according to our voters. While the Canucks defenseman has been excellent defensively and is scoring at above a point-per-game pace, Makar was the unanimous winner of the award, receiving first-place votes from all seven voters. While his defensive impact (0.3 defensive goals above replacement) hasn’t been quite as good as Hughes’ (1.7), Makar has still been fine defensively, and has more than made up for it by how much he’s pulled ahead of the scoring race for defenders with 30 points in 23 games, which currently has him on pace for 106 points.”

“While Hughes was denied back-to-back Norris trophies, Hellebuyck found himself a bit more fortunate and looks to be in better shape to capture his second-straight and third career Vezina trophy. He joins Makar as the only other unanimous winner of the quarterly awards, and for good reason.”

“Considering the fact that the Jack Adams award generally goes to the coach on the team that exceeds expectations, there are a ton of candidates at this point of the season with all the teams teams off to surprisingly hot starts that have yet to cool down. It should be no surprise that the favorite among our voters is Arniel, who in his first year with the Jets has helped them to an 18-5-0 record. Carbery is of a similar ilk with the 15-6-1 Capitals, and he finished just one point behind Arniel for the award. While they weren’t finalists, Hynes and Huska find themselves on the ballot for similar reasons due to the early success of the Wild and Flames.”