{"id":357528,"date":"2026-06-12T07:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T07:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/357528\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T07:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T07:40:10","slug":"tampa-bay-lightnings-nikita-kucherov-wins-hart-trophy-over-connor-mcdavid-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/357528\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Lightning&#8217;s Nikita Kucherov wins Hart Trophy over Connor McDavid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK \u2014 Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/nikita-kucherov-hart-trophy-ba9288fd8e5cdd2320152f1a02a954ac\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">won the Hart Trophy<\/a> as the NHL player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team, marking the second such <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/NHL\/status\/2065216607987655056?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">honor of his career<\/a> after also winning the award in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Kucherov led all players with an average of 1.71 points per game, as he finished <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/stats\/skaters?reportName=summary&amp;reportType=season&amp;sort=points,a_gamesPlayed&amp;seasonFrom=20252026&amp;seasonTo=20252026&amp;gameType=2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">second in the NHL<\/a> with 130 points, including 86 assists, in 76 games.<\/p>\n<p>In voting done by members of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thephwa.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Professional Hockey Writers Association, <\/a>and announced Thursday, Kucherov received<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/news\/tampa-bay-lightning-nikita-kucherov-surprised-with-hart-trophy-as-nhl-mvp\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> 72 of 198 first-place votes<\/a> to help him finish with 1,436 points, just 10 points ahead of Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid, and 139 points ahead of Colorado Avalanche center and fellow finalist Nathan MacKinnon. McDavid led the NHL this season with 138 points, and MacKinnon was third with 127.<\/p>\n<p>McDavid had 68 first-place votes, and MacKinnon had 52, marking the first time since the current 10-7-5-3-1 points allocation system was established in 1995-96 that all three finalists received at least 25 percent of all first-place votes. The 10-point gap between Kucherov and McDavid points was the third-smallest under the current points allocation.<\/p>\n<p>San Jose Sharks center Macklin Celebrini, the league\u2019s fourth-leading scorer with 115 points, had five first-place votes and finished fourth in balloting with 625 points. He received 103 fourth-place votes and also appeared on 182 of 198 ballots.<\/p>\n<p>Celebrini\u2019s point total was nearly twice that of the Sharks\u2019 second leading scorer, Will Smith, who had 59 points in 69 games. Celebrini also scored or assisted on 46.2% of the Sharks\u2019 249 goals this season. But his Hart candidacy was likely hurt by the Sharks missing the playoffs by four points.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">BREAKING: Nikita Kucherov has won the Hart Trophy, as the most valuable player to his team. Full voting table as selected by the PHWA. <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/hashtag\/GoBolts?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">#GoBolts<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/hashtag\/NHLAwards?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">#NHLAwards<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/0Tfdz6UxTD\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/0Tfdz6UxTD<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 NHL News (@PuckReportNHL) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/PuckReportNHL\/status\/2065214355138867215?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">June 11, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov won the Hart Trophy as the NHL player adjudged&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[18693,2070,46926,1035,18056,88,90,89,98,17438],"class_list":["post-357528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-connor-mcdavid","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-hart-trophy","tag-macklin-celebrini","tag-nikita-kucherov","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-tampa-bay-lightning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}