NHL Fans Irate After Lone Reporter Deprives Connor McDavid Of Historic Achievement

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On Monday night, the biggest names in the NHL descended upon Bridgestone Arena in Nashville in the hopes of hearing their name called during the league’s annual awards show.

It wasn’t exactly appointment viewing, as virtually everyone in attendance knew how most of the chips were going to fall before the winners were officially announced.

That was especially true when it came to the Hart Trophy, which is the piece of hardware presented to the NHL’s most valuable player. While David Pastrnak and Matthew Tkachuk were technically in contention, there was no question Oilers superstar Connor McDavid was going to walk away with the award when everything was said and done.

McDavid had already secured the Art Ross Trophy and the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy thanks to his stellar performance in the regular season, and the man who also added a fourth Ted Lindsay Award (the MVP handed out by his fellow players) on Monday ultimately walked away with the third Hart of his career.

McDavid’s victory was an absolute landslide thanks to the 195 first-place votes he ultimately received.

However, he was deprived of the chance to become the first player in NHL history to win the Hart via a unanimous vote on multiple occasions (he did so for the first time in 2021) thanks to the lone reporter who opted to place Pastrnak at the top of their ballot.

While the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association does release the ballots of every voter, it has not done so as of this writing (many people assumed a Boston-based reporter was responsible for the slight, but top suspect Joe Haggerty preemptively released his list while denying he was the culprit).

It’s pretty hard to imagine McDavid is overly sore about missing out on what would’ve been a historic achievement (there’s a chance he’ll be able to check it off his list in the future), but the same couldn’t be said for plenty of NHL fans who sounded off on the person who deprived him.