Two Numbers Stand Out on the Early Hart and Norris Boards
NHL awards odds for 2026-27 show Connor McDavid leading the Hart board and Cale Makar the Norris with notable prices for Celebrini and Schaefer.
Quick answers
Who led the early 2026-27 Hart and Norris odds?
Connor McDavid led BET99's July Hart Trophy board at +250, ahead of Nathan MacKinnon at +350. Cale Makar led the Norris market at +300, followed by Quinn Hughes at +400 and Zach Werenski at +550.
Why did Matthew Schaefer's early Norris price stand out?
Schaefer opened at +2000 after a dominant rookie season. The price balanced his unusual impact as a young defenceman against the historical reluctance of Norris voters to give the award to a 20-year-old without a longer NHL body of work.
Award futures are the most fun bet on the summer board and the most punishing. You are wagering on a season-long narrative, a voting body’s taste and eighty-four games of health, all at once. The 2026-27 Hart and Norris markets are already up, and two prices on them deserve a longer look than the favourites.
The Hart board is McDavid’s until proven otherwise
Bet99’s Hart Trophy market, as of 29 July, opened with Connor McDavid at +250 and Nathan MacKinnon at +350. Nothing surprising there. Those two have been the top of this board for most of a decade, and the argument between them is more or less permanent.
The third name is where it gets interesting. Macklin Celebrini is listed at +640, ahead of Leon Draisaitl at +900 and well ahead of David Pastrnak and Nikita Kucherov, both at +1200. Kirill Kaprizov follows at +1400 and Auston Matthews at +1500, with Jack Hughes at +2250 and Cale Makar at +2500 rounding out the top ten.
A +640 on a San Jose player is a statement. The Hart historically rewards production attached to team success, and voters have shown limited patience for great players on bad teams. Celebrini’s extension at an 18.8 million AAV tells you how the Sharks value him, and the market is clearly betting that both he and the team around him are ready to take a step. That is two separate bets bundled into one price. It is a defensible number, and it is also the kind of number that gets short well before the player and the team have both delivered.
Makar is favoured, but the Norris field is deep
Bet99’s Norris market from 13 July has Cale Makar at +300 and Quinn Hughes at +400 at the top, followed by Zach Werenski at +550 and Rasmus Dahlin at +700. Lane Hutson and Moritz Seider are both +1000, Evan Bouchard is +1200, Miro Heiskanen +2250, Charlie McAvoy +2500, and Adam Fox, Jackson LaCombe and Jake Sanderson all sit at +3000.
That is a healthier field than the Norris usually offers. The trophy spent years functioning as a two-horse race, and a board with seven defencemen inside +1200 reflects a genuine generational turnover on the blue line.
The Schaefer number
Matthew Schaefer opened at +2000, and that is the price on this board most likely to look silly in hindsight, in one direction or the other.
Schaefer spent his rookie season as the runaway Calder favourite, dominating as a teenager in a way defencemen essentially never do. The historical case against him is straightforward: Norris voters rarely hand the trophy to a twenty-year-old, and the award has traditionally required a body of work rather than a breakout. The case for him is that the precedent for a defenceman winning without an elite team already exists, and that the voting pool has been steadily more willing to reward the eye test.
The Yahoo Sports piece carrying these odds noted that Schaefer’s +2000 opening would “almost certainly welcome plenty of debate,” and put a half-unit on him at that price. That is the right size for this kind of bet. A +2000 on a second-year defenceman is a lottery ticket with a real thesis behind it, not a core position.
One caution before you bet any of it
Both of these boards are single-book snapshots from July, and award markets move harder on early-season noise than almost anything else in hockey. A hot October reshapes a Hart board completely. If you like a number here, check it against a second book before you take it, because the spread on award futures between shops is routinely wider than the edge you think you have found.
Odds and market references describe the situation at the time of writing. You must meet the legal gambling age in your province or territory. See responsible gambling. New to betting on the NHL? Start with our guide to hockey betting.