The Hart, the Pearson and the Smythe
Observation on Greatness
Copyright Iain Fyffe, 2002

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I’m not quite sure why the NHL has two regular-season MVP awards.  One, the Hart, is voted on by the hockey media.  The other, the Pearson, is voted on by the players.  For some reason, the media treats the Hart as being by far the more prestigious of the two.  Of course, it has been around more than twice as long as the Pearson, so we could give the media the benefit of the doubt, I suppose.  Here are some observations on these awards, as well as a little on the Smythe, awarded to the playoff MVP.

In the 30 years the Pearson has been awarded, the same player has won both the Pearson and the Hart in the same year 21 times.  So the writers and players agree 70% of the time on who is most valuable.  Of course, it’s the disagreements that are interesting.  Let’s start with this: Wayne Gretzky has won nine Hart trophies.  He has won “only” five Pearsons.  Perhaps the payers are not so easily impressed by gaudy scoring totals as the writers, or perhaps do not succumb as easily to hero worship so easily.

Similarly, Gretzky has a stranglehold on the career Hart awards.  He has nine, while his closest competitors (Mario Lemieux and Bobby Clarke) have three each.  In the Pearson standings, however, Gretzky has Lemieux and Guy Lafleur (who have both won four awards to Gretzky’s five) nipping at his heels.

Also of interest is how these awards are distributed amongst positions.  In this analysis I will also examine the Smythe, because it is strikingly different than the other awards in this regard.  Here is how the awards break down by position over history (which is 78 years for the Hart, 37 years for the Smythe, and 30 years for the Pearson):

One-third of the time, a goaltender wins the Smythe.  It makes sense that goalies should win a higher percentage of Smythes than other awards, since number-one goalies are not rested in the playoffs like they are in the regular season, and often play nearly all of their teams’ playoff minutes.  But does it make that big of a difference?  I find that hard to believe. 

Notice how low defencemen rate, especially in the Pearson.  I wrote recently in another piece about how defensive players’ jobs are passive in nature, and their talent therefore has less of an effect than an attacker’s.  These results seem to support that notion.  You may say that this also applies to goaltenders, and it does, but remember that goalies usually play 60 minutes a game, while top defencemen play 30 minutes of 120 minutes played by defencemen per game.  So it’s more difficult for an individual defenceman to outshine his teammates.

Another factor in the 3% showing for defencemen in the Pearson may be that the players vote on it.  Of course, there are more forwards than there are defencemen.  Forwards are probably more likely to believe that forwards are generally more valuable, and since there are more forwards than defencemen, they have the greater clout as a group.

As a final note, contrary to popular belief Mario Lemieux won neither the Hart nor the Pearson in 1989 (his 199-point season).  Gretzky took the Hart, and Steve Yzerman got the Pearson.

I still don’t know why the NHL has two regular-season MVP awards.  And I’m even less sure about which one I should be paying more attention to.