SIMMONS SAYS: Four Hart Trophy candidates are all deserving

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How do you separate four brilliant seasons — breathtaking seasons, really — to select a most valuable player in the National Hockey League?

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Connor McDavid has never looked better or faster or more dominant than he does right now with the Edmonton Oilers. He leads the NHL in scoring as well as impossible highlight-reel goals.

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He’s the MVP, right?

Nikita Kucherov has never looked better, even slower or more intellectually dominant than he has this season with the Tampa Bay Lightning. He plays a game you have to watch closely to fully appreciate and comprehend. He moves the puck like no one else in hockey. He’s the closest thing to Wayne Gretzky since Gretzky and leads the NHL in scoring per game played.

He’s the MVP, right?

Nathan MacKinnon is the most explosive player on the best team in the NHL. Isn’t that what an MVP should be? He leads the league in energy and goals scored and yet, from his assists alone, he would lead 16 other teams in scoring. His plus-minus is an historically whopping plus-56. He’s relentless and unstoppable on a nightly basis.

He’s the MVP, right?

Macklin Celebrini is everyone’s favourite story, if not second favourite player. He’s having a spectacular sophomore season, carrying the rather thin San Jose Sharks about as far as they can go. Basically, the 19-year-old has twice as many goals and twice as many assists as anyone on his team: The next leading scorer has 52 points behind Celebrini’s 108. The definition of the award — most valuable player to his team, not necessarily best player in the league — fits Celebrini perfectly.

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He’s the MVP, right?

Ballots are due in a week for the Hart Trophy and every other NHL award. A clear case can be made for four winners, all of them distinct and spectacular.

All of them deserving.

I change my voting order in my mind almost daily. Which one ends up as the winner is really anyone’s guess right now.

THIS AND THAT

So much noise about the Maple Leafs hiring a search firm to help them reset their sagging hockey operations department. These days, just about every corporation of consequence uses search firms to identify senior executives. That’s a regular practice. The problem in this case is the obvious conflict of interest. The Leafs hired Neil Glasberg to conduct the search. Glasberg also happens to represent several coaches and general managers in the NHL. Whether he shows no favouritism at all for his clients, the appearance of impropriety is there … Glasberg, by the way, represents Sunny Mehta, the Florida analytics guru, who is getting all kinds of play for the Leafs GM job. This is basically Glasberg feeding the info to hockey insiders, who then tell you how qualified Mehta is for the job. What the insiders don’t tell you: Mehta has little background in scouting, almost no background in contract negotiations and isn’t all that familiar with hockey agents. He’s very good at numbers and data. Hockey, we can’t be sure of. But Glasberg gets paid by the Leafs for being the search firm and, if Mehta winds up being foolishly hired by CEO Keith Pelley, he’ll be paid by Mehta as his representative. That’s a win/win for Glasberg, not necessarily for the Leafs … The Leafs used a search firm out of Chicago to identify Brian Burke as the candidate to be general manager in 2008, which was kind of funny at the time because anyone who knew anything about the NHL could have told you the same thing. Working for the search firm back then was Dave Poulin, who recommended Burke and then conveniently got hired as his assistant … There have been 54 general managers hired in the NHL since Mike Gillis was fired by the Vancouver Canucks 12 years ago. Why in the name of Dave Nonis would the Leafs consider hiring Gillis for anything at this time in history? … Cale Makar remains the standard for greatness on defence in hockey. He should win the Norris Trophy for the third time this season. Zach Werenski, Quinn Hughes, Evan Bouchard, Miro Heiskanen and others, including teenager Matthew Schaefer, have all had spectacular years, but it’s still Makar’s trophy to lose … Coach of the year candidates: Jon Cooper, Tampa Bay; Lindy Ruff, Buffalo; Dan Muse, Pittsburgh; Rod Brind’Amour (every year) Carolina; Marco Sturm, Boston; Jared Bednar, Colorado; Joel Quenneville, Anaheim; Andre Tourigny, Utah.. All of them deserving … The Devils have basically fired GM Tom Fitzgerald but apparently haven’t made a decision yet on coach Sheldon Keefe’s future … The Leafs, New Jersey and Nashville are all looking for GMs, which is highly unusual by NHL standards. And if Vancouver ties the can to Patrik Allvin — which he has told people is coming — then that would be four openings at one time for a job that used to be like a senate appointment. You held it forever … Since Bruce Cassidy was fired as coach in Vegas, the gutless Cassidy-bashers have been out there, saying he’s no fun to play for. All Cassidy does is win. And it’s hard to do that. And if the millionaires who play for him don’t like that, boo-hoo to them. Steve Shutt used to say this about the legendary Scotty Bowman, who he won a bunch of Stanley Cups with in Montreal: “We liked him one day a year. The day we got our rings.”

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HEAR AND THERE

Building teams in any sport is about asset management. And looking back, the Brendan Shanahan years with the Leafs can be a retroactive study in hockey mismanagement. Over a 10-year period, the Leafs traded away nine first-round draft picks, the majority of those in deadline deals for Ryan O’Reilly, Scott Laughton, Nick Foligno and Brandon Carlo. They used first-round picks to get salary cap relief by getting out of the contracts of Petr Mrazek and Patrick Marleau. The only players of any value they picked up for first-round picks were Jake Muzzin, Jake McCabe and, originally, Freddie Andersen. In the same time period, they let Zach Hyman walk in free agency and traded Nazem Kadri for next to nothing. That’s a whole lot of opportunities wasted in a decade of guessing, overpaying and almost-great hockey … What a bittersweet terrific season this has been for Mark Scheifele. It will be his first 100-point year, yet he’s out of the playoffs with the Winnipeg Jets and was mysteriously left off Team Canada for the Olympics. It’s not often a player has his most explosive season in his 13th year … How different would the Leafs have been had they taken Alex DeBrincat or Jordan Kyrou with their second pick in the Auston Matthews draft? They selected Egor Korshkov with their first pick in the second round in 2016. He played one game for the Leafs. Matthews has scored the most goals from that draft class. DeBrincat is second after scoring 40 goals this year in Detroit and 39 the year before. Some scouts thought the diminutive DeBrincat would never play higher than the AHL, but truth is, he has never played a single game in the minors … Wouldn’t a young Pat Morris, the player agent, be a perfect director of hockey operations for the Maple Leafs? I’d be looking for someone like him, or Pat Brisson, someone who knows the NHL inside and out to run the hockey club. Among player agents who became GMs: Bill Zito, Kent Hughes, Kyle Dubas, Burke, the late Pierre Lacroix and Gillis. There’s some good in there and some not-so-good … On Friday in Mississauga, they said goodbye to former minor hockey coach Rino Spezza, father of Pittsburgh assistant GM Jason Spezza. It made me think of Mike Babcock at his worst. An unwell Rino made his way to Scotiabank Arena in a wheelchair to watch Jason play his first game as a Maple Leaf. Babcock, with an all-time small move — his specialty — made Spezza a healthy scratch for the home opener. “My dad was a special man,” said Spezza. “And we had a wonderful relationship.”

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SCENE AND HEARD

The World Baseball Classic was hugely successful, but right now many baseball clubs are wondering about the value of the tournament. Many of the biggest stars in the game are off to terrible starts. Aaron Judge is hitting a soft .224 in the early season, which is better than Cal Raleigh at .135 and one home run, and Bobby Witt Jr., without a home run. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., has one homer in 13 games after hitting eight in the playoffs and Josh Naylor has no homers and barely any hits at all, batting .115 in Seattle … The appropriately spelled ‘K’azuma Okamoto is on pace to strike out about 200 times in his first big league season. The Blue Jays record for most strikeouts in a season is 170 by Jose Bautista and Matt Chapman. Okamoto is not leading the American League in Ks. Minnesota’s Matt Wallner has struck out 28 times in his first 56 at-bats this season … There are many things in the world to be concerned about: Daulton Varsho’s walkup music is not among them … Not sure expectations for Varsho seem so large among Blue Jays fans. He’s a streaky hitter, a 20ish home run guy who doesn’t get on base a lot and doesn’t hit for average. That’s who he is. That’s not likely to change … With Bo Bichette gone to New York, Alejandro Kirk gone to Florida for injury rehab, Addison Barger on the injured list and Okamoto striking out, offence should be a challenge for the Blue Jays. It will test their everyman approach all season long … He’s Shohei Ohtani. He’s special. He is, what John Schneider calls, the best baseball player ever. If he needs a few seconds to get ready to pitch between innings, give it to him. He’s the game, he’s the attraction. To hell with the rules on this one … Pat Gillick used to say: Believe nothing you see in spring training or September. I heard Ross Atkins on radio before the season started, talking about how great Brendon Little looked in the spring. And immediately I thought of Gillick, and that was before Little’s early-season implosion with the Jays … The best Toronto GMs I’ve had the pleasure of working around: 1. Gillick; 2. Masai Ujiri; 3. Cliff Fletcher; 4. Leo Cahill; 5. Tim Bezbatchenko; 6. Alex Anthopoulos; 7. Lou Lamoriello … Among the best GM people I’ve worked around: Brad Treliving, Jim Popp, Dave Nonis, Pinball Clemons, Jim Barker, Glen Grunwald … Three starts are not a season, but Calgary’s Mike Soroka, who has battled so many injuries, has a 2.87 earned run average in Arizona with 23 strikeouts in 15.2 innings pitched. That’s a hopeful beginning for a guy who hasn’t had a full big-league season since 2019.

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AND ANOTHER THING

Should Shai Gilgeous-Alexander win a second straight MVP award in the NBA — and he is the favourite at season’s end — he will join a most impressive list of those who have won two in a row: Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Steph Curry, LeBron James, Steve Nash, Tim Duncan, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Moses Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell. You almost have to read that list a second time just to appreciate the place SGA has earned in the NBA … It’s almost as though the Kawhi Leonard investigation has disappeared. The NBA can do that — pretend things didn’t happen. And somehow it seems to get away with it … The WNBA has expanded to Toronto and Portland this season after expanding to Golden State last season. And now it is going to Philadelphia, Cleveland and Detroit. It seems like too much too soon for a league still on the rise … Toronto’s Mark Jones is walking away from a long and terrific run calling games for ESPN and ABC. But apparently he’s not retiring. Like his brother Paul Jones, who has called Raptors games forever, nobody seems to like the retirement word in that family … Sometimes statistics can be troubling: DeMar DeRozan has passed Oscar Robertson on the career scoring list in the NBA. How can that be? … Scott Oake. Joe Bowen. Vic Rauter. Canada is losing many of its best voices, all at once. All three seemingly irreplaceable … Looking back at what was most impressive about Mike Weir’s win at The Masters: Before him and after him, were five years of either Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson winning. Tiger three times. Mickelson twice. And the little Canadian lefty in between … Happy birthday to Jim Nill (68), Trevor Linden (56), Adam Graves (58), Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (33), Cavan Biggio (31), Bret Saberhagen (62), Kelvim Escobar (50), Jennifer Heil (43), Mark Teixeira (46) and David Letterman (79) … And hey, whatever became of Dave Barr?

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