With less than two weeks to go in the NHL regular season, several Bruins remain firmly in the conversation for some end-of-season hardware.
Brad Marchand’s outstanding season should garner him some Hart Trophy (NHL MVP) consideration. Charlie McAvoy’s similarly stellar season puts him in the Norris Trophy (best defenseman) race. Patrice Bergeron is always among the favorites for the Berger… err, Selke Trophy (best defensive forward), and this year is no different. Bruce Cassidy shouldn’t be overlooked in the Jack Adams Award (best coach) discussion, but it kind of feels like he is.
So, what are the chances that these Bruins A) find themselves among the three finalists for these awards, and B) win any of them? Let’s take a look.
Hart Trophy
Marchand is having a phenomenal season, the best of his career on a goals per game basis and second-best (just barely) on a points per game basis. He has been the one offensive constant on a Bruins team that, especially pre-trade deadline, had struggled to score most of the season.
Marchand’s 58 points and 1.26 points per game rank sixth in the NHL and are 16 more than any of his teammates. He has eight more goals (26) than anyone else on the Bruins, eight more even-strength goals (20), and seven more assists (32).
Marchand is also an elite defensive forward and the most dangerous penalty-killer in the league, with his NHL-best six shorthanded points backing that up.
All that said, Marchand is not winning the Hart. We can say that definitively because there is one player towering above the rest of the field: Connor McDavid. The Oilers star’s 81 points (28 goals, 53 assists) are 15 more than anyone else in the NHL and 21 more than anyone else who isn’t teammate Leon Draisaitl. Every advanced metric that tries to measure “value” has McDavid on top, too. He’s your Hart winner.
So the debate is whether Marchand should be one of the three finalists, something he has never been before. It’s going to be tough. The favorites to round out the top three are Toronto’s Auston Matthews, who has a league-high 35 goals and the same number of points as Marchand, and Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon, a two-time Hart runner-up who has been on an absurd tear over the last month and half, posting 38 points (14 goals, 24 assists) over his last 22 games to climb up to 60 on the season.
Prediction: Marchand ends up somewhere in the four-to-seven range in voting, but misses out on being a finalist as McDavid, Matthews and MacKinnon claim those three spots.
Norris Trophy
The Norris field isn’t as clear-cut as the Hart field, with as many as a dozen or more defensemen having at least some sort of credible case to be in the discussion.
McAvoy is certainly one of them, and the case for him is about defense. According to Evolving-Hockey, McAvoy ranks third among all defensemen in total defensive value, fourth in shots against per 60 minutes among 159 defensemen who have played at least 150 minutes at five-on-five, and 10th in expected goals against.
The narrative of McAvoy stepping up following the departures of Zdeno Chara and Torey Krug in the offseason, plus numerous injuries to every other key defenseman on the Bruins this year, is an appealing (and accurate) one.
What will probably prevent McAvoy from having a real shot to win is that he is still not elite when it comes to point production. His 26 points (4 goals, 22 assists) in 44 games rank him 22nd among defensemen in points per game. That's still really good, especially when you combine that with his shutdown defense, but Norris winners and finalists are generally closer to the top of the scoring columns.
And there are other candidates in this field who are higher up those rankings, some of whom may end up as finalists through a combination of those points and reputation. Former winner and four-time finalist Victor Hedman of the Lightning is second among defensemen in points and will almost certainly be a finalist again, but allow me to join the growing chorus of those who will argue he shouldn’t be. His defensive play has dropped off this season, and the Lightning actually have a better goal differential with him off the ice than on it. He’s a minus-9 over the last month.
There’s a similar case to be made against Washington’s John Carlson -- lots of points, but not good enough defensively. As far as I’m concerned, Adam Fox of the Rangers should be the favorite. He is first among defensemen in points (47), grades out well in defensive metrics, and his team is significantly better in terms of goal differential with him on the ice than off it.
Colorado’s Cale Makar, who is first among defensemen in points per game, would be a lock to be a finalist if he hadn’t missed 12 games due to injury. He might still be a finalist anyways. Teammates Samuel Girard and Devon Toews both have strong cases of their own, but there could be some vote-splitting there that keeps them out of the top three. Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic recently made the case for old friend Dougie Hamilton to be second behind Fox.
Prediction: McAvoy finishes somewhere in the top eight in voting, but doesn’t make the top three.
Selke Trophy
Marchand also has a case here, but as has been the case for years now, he’ll play second fiddle to his center. Bergeron is still the one with more defensive responsibilities, and he still grades out extremely well across the board as he seeks a record 10th straight nomination and a record fifth win.
Evolving-Hockey has Bergeron seventh in total defensive value among forwards, first in shots against per 60 minutes, and fourth in expected goals against per 60 minutes. Bergeron also leads the NHL in faceoff wins (620) and faceoff percentage (61.6%).
He should absolutely at least be a finalist once again, but there seems to be a consensus building around Panthers center Aleksander Barkov as this year’s winner. While there could be elements of Bergeron fatigue and it’s-his-turn Barkov momentum at play here, Barkov is also an outstanding two-way center who would be a more than deserving winner.
Vegas winger Mark Stone, the Selke runner-up in 2019, probably has the inside track to be the third finalist, although Marchand, Canadiens center Phillip Danault, Wild center Joel Eriksson Ek and Stars center Joe Pavelski lurk as well.
Prediction: Bergeron finishes second behind Barkov. Marchand finishes just outside the top five, besting his career-best ninth-place finish last year.
Jack Adams Award
Cassidy, last year’s Jack Adams winner, hasn’t been popping up much in this year’s discussion, probably because the Bruins have been hanging out in fourth place in the East Division for a while now.
If they finish strong and climb a couple spots over these last two weeks, though, he might start to. The Bruins being a top-five defensive team given what they lost in the offseason and all the injuries they’ve had on the blue line in-season is an impressive feat, and Cassidy deserves a lot of credit for keeping the ship afloat.
For now, though, our prediction is that Cassidy will be outside the top three behind some combination of the coaches whose teams are above the Bruins in points, with Florida’s Joel Quenneville and Carolina’s Rod Brind’Amour probably leading the way.
Vezina Trophy
Tuukka Rask has missed too much time to be a finalist for a second straight year, but I figured we’d throw this in here. The Vezina is shaping up to be a pretty straightforward race this year, with Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy deservingly on track for a second win in the last three years, while Vegas’ Marc-Andre Fleury and Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck (who won last year) round out the group of three finalists.