In June, Nikita Kucherov won his second Hart Trophy, ahead of Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon. A week into the new season, the prediction markets favour none of the three. Macklin Celebrini trades at 28¢ on Kalshi and 26¢ on Polymarket to be this season’s most valuable player.
The case the price is making
Celebrini scored 45 goals and 115 points last season, fourth in the league behind McDavid, Kucherov and MacKinnon. He turned 20 in June. San Jose finished 24th with 86 points, and the Hart has usually gone to a player whose team made the playoffs, so the price is partly a bet on the Sharks as well as on him.
His opening night fits the pitch: three assists and seven shots in 23 minutes in a 4-3 overtime win over Florida.
McDavid at 19¢
Connor McDavid led the league with 138 points last season, eight more than Kucherov, and finished second in the Hart vote. He has seven points in two games this season, five of them in Thursday’s 9-7 win in Vancouver. The market makes him a little under a one-in-five chance.
The rest of the field
- Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado: 13¢ on both Kalshi and Polymarket. 127 points last season and two goals in the opener, an 8-4 win over Los Angeles.
- Nikita Kucherov, Tampa Bay: 11¢ on Polymarket. 130 points in 76 games and the Hart in June. He scored in Thursday’s 5-1 loss to the Rangers.
- Auston Matthews, Toronto: 6¢ to 10¢. The widest gap between the two venues in the top five.
The players’ vote sees it differently
The Ted Lindsay Award, voted by the players, has its own market, and there the order flips. Polymarket has McDavid at 22¢, MacKinnon at 21¢ and Celebrini third at 14¢. The two awards often go to the same player, so a gap that wide between them is unusual this early.
Every candidate and every venue is on the Hart Trophy odds page, and the Ted Lindsay odds sit alongside it.
