The Hart Race Is a Two-Man Market Again, and the Defending Winner Is an Afterthought

Nikita Kucherov won the Hart Trophy in 2026. He opens the 2026-27 season tied for sixth on the board at +1200, behind two players he beat and a 20-year-old who has never finished top three. The market has looked at last year’s vote, decided it was an outlier, and gone straight back to the two names it always defaults to.

BET99’s numbers as of July 29 put Connor McDavid at +250 and Nathan MacKinnon at +350, with Macklin Celebrini third at +640 and Leon Draisaitl fourth at +900. David Pastrnak joins Kucherov at +1200, Kirill Kaprizov sits at +1400, Auston Matthews at +1500, Jack Hughes at +2250 and Cale Makar at +2500.

OddsShopper’s model roundup landed in the same place from a different direction, with eight models converging on a near-dead heat between McDavid at 18.1 percent and MacKinnon at 18.0 percent and Kucherov a distant third at 11.3 percent. When the models and the books agree this closely, it usually means both are anchored to the same prior rather than that either has found something.

Why Kucherov’s price is not crazy

Voter fatigue is real and Kucherov is 33. The Lightning open at +1200 on the Cup board, which is good but not the kind of team narrative that carries an MVP campaign, and Tampa spent its summer adding John Carlson on a two-year deal at $8.5 million per season rather than adding to the top six. Hart voting rewards the best player on a team whose season means something, and it rewards new stories more than it admits.

Still, dropping the reigning winner to sixth is a strong statement about how much of last year the electorate is willing to credit. If Kucherov posts another 120-point season on a division-winning Tampa team, the same voters will discover him again.

Celebrini is the one that moves

The interesting number is +640. Celebrini scored 115 points in his second NHL season and then signed a five-year, $94 million extension at an $18.8 million AAV, making him the highest-paid player in the league at 20 years old. San Jose is no longer a rebuild in any meaningful sense. Will Smith and Michael Misa are developing behind him, the Sharks added Jacob Trouba and Mason Marchment in free agency, and Ivar Stenberg arrives as one of the better rookie prospects in the draft class.

The obstacle is the same one that has always kept San Jose off award ballots, which is that Hart voters need the team to be in a playoff race in March. If the Sharks are, Celebrini will be the story of the season and +640 will look absurd in hindsight. If they are not, he will finish fifth with 110 points and nobody outside California will argue about it.

What McDavid needs

McDavid at +250 is priced as though the Oilers are a lock to be excellent, and they are close to it at +900 on the Cup board. Edmonton’s summer was quiet by design, with Frederik Andersen added in goal on a one-year, $2.8 million deal that ESPN graded A-minus, which is a bargain if it works and an admission of the same unsolved problem if it does not.

The honest read is that McDavid has been the best player in the world for most of a decade and has been beaten to this trophy repeatedly anyway, because the award drifts toward whoever has the cleanest narrative in April. MacKinnon at +350 on a Colorado team that will be in the conference’s top tier all year is the better structural bet. Celebrini at +640 is the better price.

Odds cited reflect boards posted in late July 2026 and will have moved.

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