Over 40 games in, nearly 50 depending on your team of choice, a host of favorites have emerged to take home the end of the year hardware revered as the Hart Memorial Trophy, or for more casual fans, the NHL’s equivalent of the MVP award. Here’s a look at how the race is shaking out:1. Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh Penguins, Center Clearly the frontrunner at this juncture, Crosby leads the league in goals next to top 5 assists numbers, which for the mathematicians out there gives him a clear inside track on taking home this year’s high point total. Barring injury or a rare slump from the 2007 Hart winner, Crosby is well on his way towards adding another identical honor to his trophy case.2. Tim Thomas, Boston Bruins, Goalie The only legitimate threat to Crosby from a statistical standpoint, Thomas is hindered by his position, as only two goalies have taken home the Hart Trophy since Jacques Plante in 1961-62 (the two being Dominik Hasek in ’96-’97/’97-’98 and Jose Theodore in ’01-02). Still, Thomas’ first half of the season is a remarkable story. Expected to be unseated as the primary goalie in Boston, Thomas is the only netminder in the league with a Goals Against Average under 2.00 or a Save Percentage above .940, postponing the Tuukka Rask era by at least another year.3. Henrik Sedin, Vancouver Canucks, Center Strange for the defending Hart Trophy winner to be the dark horse in this race, but it speaks more to the stellar seasons underway by Crosby and Thomas than any shortcoming on Sedin’s part. Accumulating an astonishing number of assists, Sedin currently leads the league by double digits. However, goals take more notice by the writers, and Sedin has fallen substantially off the pace he set last year, a very respectable 29 red-lighters.Yes, there is a lot of hockey left to play. But surveying the list of potential candidates, the 2010-2011 Hart Trophy winner will come from this short list, with no players more valuable to their respective team nor performing in the same echelon as these fast-starters.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 18th, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under Eastern Conference, Hart Trophy, Western Conference. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.