The Boston Bruins are going to clean up at the 2023 NHL Awards.
The Bruins have the favorites to win the Vezina Trophy tending net, as DraftKings Sportsbook has given Linus Ullmark -3000 odds to win the award this season. Patrice Bergeron is nearly a lock to win the Selke Trophy for the sixth time in his career and Jim Montgomery has all but locked up the Jack Adams Award, so much so that neither have odds listed at most major sportsbooks.
Oh yeah, the Bruins have also already locked up the Presidents' Trophy and are the odds-on favorite to win the Stanley Cup (+380), per DraftKings. There's one trophy in which the Bruins might not be able to grasp in 2023, however.
Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid is the favorite to take home the Hart Trophy, which is awarded to the NHL's MVP. Once given -5000 odds to win it, you can no longer even bet on the winner of the award at DraftKings. That signals a belief that no one has a chance at catching McDavid, but there is a belief that David Pastrnak has a solid case to claim the award by season's end.
ESPN went through each NHL end-of-season award and asked voters where they lean, with one making a solid case for the man known as "Pasta." Here is a snippet from ESPN's article.
One voter opted for Pastrnak, the Bruins' star winger. He's second to McDavid in goals. There's a chance he could finish with twice as many goals as anyone else on the Bruins' roster this season while leading the team by more than 30 points over the next highest scorer.
Therein lies the argument for Pastrnak: He has been the most productive player on the best team in the NHL this season, a constant for them as others have been in and out of the lineup. It's the 2018-19 Nikita Kucherov formula, when he won the Hart as the leading scorer of an all-time great Tampa Bay Lightning regular-season team. The difference being that Kucherov also led the NHL in points, and Pastrnak will not.
Pastrnak, with just five games left in the regular season, trails McDavid (147), Leon Draisaitl (123) and Kucherov (106) in points, tallying 103 on the season. Though the 26-year-old does have the second most goals on the season (56) behind McDavid's 62, the scoring hole is likely just too deep for him to climb out of in terms of convincing Hart voters.
Good news for Bruins fans, no one will care if the Black and Gold win the cup at season's end.
