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Originally Posted by Resolute 14
I can read Wikipedia articles too, thanks.
If you want to get down to it, I would say the present course of voting for the Hart is consistent with the intent, as the other arguments are nonsensical on their face.
How do you judge "most valuable to his team"? If you make that a relativistic comparison against a player's teammates, then any player on a stacked team is necessarily eliminated as there is always another star player. That would pretty much demote the award to the most valuable of the league's mediocre franchises.
There is also a legitimate argument to be made that the best player = most valuable to the league = most valuable to his team.
The Hart trophy suffers from a description that simply does not match the reality of the award. In this year, I would agree with others that Crosby wins, hands down, under any definition. He was that good overall, and that much better than anyone else on his own team. Consequently, he was most valuable in either case.
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I think the trophy should be awarded to a player who is the main reason his team is competitive.
For example, do the 2013 Islanders make the playoffs without Tavares? Hell no. Good reason to hand out the Hart Trophy. Do the 2014 Penguins make the playoffs without Crosby? Probably. They've done it before (and Malkin won the Hart trophy when it happened, for good reason).