2024 NHL predictions: Mitch Marners a dark horse to win Hart Trophy

Connor McDavid is again the clear and consensus favorite to win the Hart Trophy this coming season.Although the Edmonton Oilers center came up short in the MVP race in 2023-24, he still managed to finish third in the voting and the two players who eclipsed him (Nathan MacKinnon and Nikita Kucherov) each posted 140-plus points.That’s the kind of effort needed to win the Hart Trophy with McDavid, who has won the award three times since 2017, in his prime. Bookmakers believe the players with the best chance of stopping McDavid this season are MacKinnon (+500), Auston Matthews (+1000), Jack Hughes (+1100) and Kucherov (+1800).If tasked to pick one of those four, I would consider a punt on Matthews, who is coming off a 69-goal season for Toronto.

While that illustrious total might not get replicated, the new Maple Leafs captain should still threaten the 60-goal mark in a healthy campaign, and he’s also one of the best defensive centers in the league, so he will have more to his portfolio than just the goals.On the other end of the spectrum for me is Hughes, the New Jersey Devils center who will likely be a trendy pick by punters and pundits trying to avoid picking the same players as everyone else.While he’s a dazzling player and inarguably one of the league’s best offensive forces, that number is way too short for Hughes, who has missed 20-plus games in two of the last three campaigns.Beating out McDavid and the elite players immediately behind him on the betting board is not only a daunting task but unlikely to happen, but that won’t stop us from trying to find the best longshot value in this season’s Hart Trophy race.The noise around Marner is deafening for a lot of reasons, but if you cut through the media circus you can see why he makes sense as a triple-digit punt in this market.

Marner played to a 110-point pace in 2021-22, hit 99 points in 2022-23 and played to a 101-point pace in 69 games last season, so he’s one of the only players in this rang...