“M-V-P!” chants are as ubiquitous and annoying as T-shirt cannons in our nation’s arenas these days.
They’re hard to take seriously anymore.
That includes those salutes at the Prudential Center, where Devils star left wing Taylor Hall rode a 19-game point streak (and 26 consecutive appearances, since the official NHL record book refused to recognize Hall’s three-game absence due to a thumb injury) into their tilt with Winnipeg on Thursday night.
Both streaks came to an end in the Devils’ 3-2 loss to the turbo-charged Jets.
Hall’s incredible run has vaulted him into the conversation for the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player.
But he can’t win it if his club fails to advance into the postseason. And that’s where things get dicey.
The Devils are in deep trouble. They have lost four of their last five games, all in regulation. They’re not getting much production when Hall is not on the ice. The defense is prone to breakdowns. And the goaltending ... well, you’ve read enough about my views on Cory Schneider, whose (excuse the pun) schneid reached 10 in a row (eight in regulation) after Thursday’s defeat.
With Florida and Columbus, New Jersey’s closest rivals for the Eastern Conference’s two wild-card slots, both winning Thursday, the Devils’ once-comfortable nine-point margin from a week ago has all but evaporated.
The Devils (76 points in 68 games) now hold a one-point lead over the eighth-place Blue Jackets and have a three-point edge on the Panthers (who have three games in hand) as they embark on a brutal six-game road trip that could seal their fate one way or the other.
If New Jersey somehows survive this stretch run in which it faces 10 teams currently in a playoff position in their final 14 games (as compared with eight of the Panthers’ last 16 games and four of the Blue Jackets’ final 14), then, by all means, the campaign to get Hall his first Hart Trophy will have merit.
For they would have done so on Hall’s back.
Hall’s 74 points rank just 10th in the league, which is fodder for the naysayers. However, each of those nine skaters ahead of Hall have the company of at least one teammate who is among the league’s top 30 point producers.
The next highest scoring Devil after Hall? That would be 19-year old rookie Nico Hischier, who entered Thursday’s contest with 41 points in 67 games. In other words, Hall had almost as many points (38) during that 26-game streak as the Devils’ No. 2 scorer had all season.
Hall was involved in half of New Jersey’s goals scored during his streak. That’s insane, considering how, as the Devils' sole big-time threat, he is targeted for extra attention, legally and illegally, by every opponent.
The 26-game streak was tied for the 13th longest in history with Chicago’s Patrick Kane, who, not coincidentally, won the Hart in that 2015-16 season. Check out the names ahead of them on that list — Gretzky, Lemieux, etc.
“What (Hall) has done is just amazing,” Hischier said after recording a goal and a primary assist in Thursday’s defeat. “It’s not always about the points. Even tonight, he created a lot of offense. It doesn’t mean if he doesn’t get a point, he plays bad. He helps the team in other ways,”
Hall was inches from providing the final nudge of Hischier’s swat off the pads of Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck before it went into the net. Though Hall wasn’t credited with a point, his feed to the trailing Will Butcher initiated the sequence. It's the way he has driven the Devils’ attack all season.
“I said all along, you want (the streak) to end on a night where you get your chances,” Hall said. “Our line was plus-two. I thought we were in the offensive zone a lot. I thought we created a lot of chances and we got a couple of goals. I just wasn’t in on them. You always want to be honest with your evaluation of yourself, and tonight was a night where you probably deserved maybe a couple of points while there were some nights on the streak where I didn’t play well at all and maybe found a way to get a couple of points.”
For all of Hall’s virtuosity this season, however, the Devils’ demise will surely be held against him in the eyes of the year-end awards voters. The last Hart Trophy recipient from a nonplayoff team was Andy Bathgate with the 1958-59 Rangers.
On the other hand, goaltender Jose Theodore copped the Hart after the 2001-02 season, when Montreal was seeded eighth in the East.
Which means, at this stage of the season, the chants at the Rock should be “M-V-P?”