Gamers from the Atlantic Division and all around the league will start reporting to coaching camps in just one week to arrange for the 2025-25 NHL season.
There’s numerous preparation that must be finished within the Atlantic Division for lots of groups with excessive hopes.
You’ve acquired the Panthers in Florida making ready for a possible three-peat this season. The Maple Leafs in Toronto are hoping to retool their roster in direction of actual rivalry after the lack of Mitch Marner. For the Bruins, this upcoming 12 months will hopefully be a bounce-back for the followers in Boston who needed to endure an uncharacteristically disastrous season.
These are just a few of the storylines on this aggressive division that’s headlined by the celebrities on immediately’s record who may very well be contenders for the Hart Trophy, the NHL’s regular-season MVP award.
Listed here are the 5 gamers within the Atlantic Division with the shortest odds to take dwelling league MVP.
Auston Matthews, C, Maple Leafs (+1800)
Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews could have much more on his plate this season within the absence of his former teammate, Marner.
The argument from Toronto followers final 12 months was primarily that the distractions and frustration that Marner produced had extra of an affect on the workforce than his offensive manufacturing. And the entrance workplace agreed. They gambled that spending cash on deepening the roster makes extra sense than extending an sad, and more and more unpopular, famous person.
If that gamble is to repay, some portion of Marner’s 27 targets and 75 assists from final season have to get replaced by offensive manufacturing from Matthews.
In years previous this may’ve been a straightforward factor to count on from Matthews. In any case, he’s already received the Hart Trophy for the 2021-22 season and has led the NHL in objective scoring 3 times.
However this previous 12 months was a reasonably down one for Matthews’ offense. He had the bottom year-end objective whole of his profession in 2024-25 and his third-lowest general level whole.
We’ll see this 12 months if that down 12 months is an outlier or the start of a brand new regular for the 27-year-old.
Matthews has a superb case to be made for being the most effective participant in his convention, a minimum of within the common season. There positively may very well be arguments made that lots of his conference-mates are way more potent playoff performers than Matthews is.
However Matthews might also now be an important participant to his workforce within the convention.
In years previous, any misgivings about Matthews’ performances may very well be hidden behind the myriad different poor performances occurring elsewhere on the Maple Leafs. He nonetheless has two out of the Core 4 backing him up, however the disappearance of a handy punching bag in Marner means extra of the credit score or, extra possible, blame will fall on Matthews’ shoulders.
This write-up about him being a fantastic Hart candidate has was considerably of a bummer, however isn’t that the case with most discourse about Toronto just lately? An excellent, excellent at instances, workforce collapsing underneath the unbelievable weight of the expectations of the league’s most foaming-at-the-mouth fanbase.
David Pastrnak, RW, Bruins (+2800)
At +2800, David Pastrnak sits on the backside of the highest tier of Hart Trophy candidates this upcoming season.
Should you’re shopping for in on Pastrnak’s candidacy, it’s most likely since you consider in his objective scoring. One of many league’s greatest snipers, Pastrnak beforehand led the league in objective scoring for the 2019-20 season. Within the 5 seasons since, Pastrnak has landed within the prime 5 of objective scoring twice.
That scoring might return to league-best this season now that Pasta is the principle or, uh, solely offensive weapon on the Bruins.
However that truth raises one other crucial level about Pastrnak that would gasoline a broader case for him as a Hart candidate subsequent season. He’s now one in all solely two gamers — defenseman Charlie McAvoy being the opposite — that’s left from Boston’s run on the Stanley Cup in 2019. Furthermore, he, McAvoy, and defenseman Hampus Lindholm are the one three gamers left from the Bruins’ record-setting Presidents’ Trophy-winning 2022-23 season.
It goes with out saying that there was a big turnover in Boston’s management and veteran core. This 12 months, with a clean slate from a disastrous 2024-25 season, Pastrnak has a chance to fill that void.
It’s been confirmed by basic supervisor Don Sweeney that the Bruins won’t identify a captain heading into the 2025-26 season and can as an alternative search for one to develop over the course of the 12 months.
If Pastrnak — who needs to be the prohibitive favourite to come back out of the 12 months carrying a ‘C’ — can’t be that man for Boston, then it’s an enormous failure on his half.
A world the place Pastrnak does take over that essential management function for the Bruins — becoming a member of the lineage of his mentors and previous captains like Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron, and Brad Marchand — can also be one the place he turns into extra of a candidate for the Hart Trophy.
If he’s checking the on-ice and off-ice packing containers which can be essential to turn out to be a captain in Boston, then he’s made himself a worthy candidate to win his first MVP.
Matthew Tkachuk, LW, Panthers (+10000)
This upcoming season will likely be a tough one for Matthew Tkachuk to have an opportunity at successful the Hart Memorial Trophy. He has the expertise, however he’ll most likely lack the time wanted to make a powerful push at MVP.
Following a 12 months for Tkachuk that was marred by accidents, he’s headed into 2025-26 anticipating to overlook two or extra months of play.
At season’s finish, Tkachuk revealed that he had suffered a torn abductor muscle and a sports activities hernia damage all the way in which again on the 4 Nations match in February. That damage brought on him to overlook the final 25 video games of the common season, however he determined to play via it on the Panthers’ run to a second-straight Stanley Cup.
In August, Tkachuk had surgical procedure to restore each accidents however instructed reporters that the restoration would power him to overlook the primary two to 3 months of the season.
That previous story most likely has the old-timer hockey followers who quote Herb Brooks’ traces from Miracle to their son or daughter’s youth hockey groups salivating — “A bruise on the leg’s a good distance from the center.”
Together with his aforementioned ‘hockey-guy’ bonafides, being a two-time Stanley Cup Finals winner, and his standing as, probably, the face of the league, a minimum of in America, Tkachuk can be a shoo-in for Hart rivalry with out the anticipated missed time.
If we’re even following the low-end of his self-reported restoration time, Tkachuk will most likely miss a minimum of 25 to 30 video games this 12 months. No non-goalie winner of the Hart Trophy has missed greater than 9 video games, and most didn’t miss any.
Surprisingly, Tkachuk has by no means been a significant contender for the Hart Trophy given his relevance to the league over the previous few years. His highest end within the voting was for the 2022-23 season when he completed third behind Pastrnak and the eventual-winner Connor McDavid. This 12 months most likely received’t get him any higher.
William Nylander, RW, Maple Leafs (+15000)
William Nylander is an extended shot to win the Hart Trophy this season, however his candidacy, and his place within the league typically, are each price discussing.
Like his teammate Matthews, Nylander has to have loved having Marner as a defend from criticism. Considering again to the Maple Leafs’ most up-to-date first-round flameout towards Boston in 2024, the winger was in a position to conceal from a lot of the blame from the collection attributable to his damage.
Nylander was allowed to play the function of savior in that collection, if he wished to, or if his play was unsatisfactory, he was in a position to excuse it by saying he was nonetheless harm.
Now that I consider it, Nylander has form of been in a position to fly underneath the radar all through the latest years of turmoil in Toronto.
Marner was typically picked on as being the delicate Gen Z tennis child. Tavares had the burden of being an underperforming captain. And Matthews was clearly the most effective participant, however by no means actually a superb playoff one.
Within the Core 4 period, Nylander has at all times been the one with the least criticism and the least blame.
Now, Nylander is coming into this new ‘Core Three’ period in Toronto after having a profession 12 months in 2024-25. He set a brand new profession excessive with 45 targets final season. Does that translate into extra expectations for the 29-year-old? And if Nylander could make his 45-goal efficiency extra of an everyday incidence on this new period, may he be in line to turn out to be a Hart Trophy candidate?
Within the typical Maple-Leafs-ian method, the place issues go south, there could also be the next probability we see a commerce request from Nylander than a sudden run on the Hart Trophy. After signing an eight-year contract final season, his solely different technique to get out of a nasty scenario in Toronto is thru free company in 2032, when he will likely be 36.
Nick Suzuki, C, Canadiens (+25000)
Lastly, Montreal’s Nick Suzuki is a good additional lengthy shot for the Hart Trophy however I’ll attempt to make the small case for why he may turn out to be a slight contender later within the season.
Final 12 months was a significant maturing 12 months for the 26-year-old captain. He had a profession excessive level whole for the workforce with 89, 30 targets and 59 assists, in 82 video games. Final season additionally marked a number of milestones: his three hundredth profession level, his four-hundredth profession sport and his 2 hundredth profession help.
Past that, Suzuki helped the Canadiens attain the playoffs for the primary time in three seasons. He contributed two targets of their short-lived playoff ‘run’ the place they misplaced to the Washington Capitals in 5 video games.
It was a significant step up for Suzuki who may be the centerpiece of a workforce that Montreal followers hope is brimming with younger expertise. Previous to this previous 12 months, hope, was actually the one factor they’d from their younger core. There wasn’t actually an outlined chief on the workforce or a standout participant.
However, together with Suzuki’s profession 12 months, final season additionally had one other stellar 12 months from ahead Cole Caufield and a Calder-winning marketing campaign from defenseman Lane Hutson.
Perhaps, although, it may be Suzuki who leads the workforce to a different playoff berth and additional into the playoffs.
If he can sustain his point-a-game tempo this upcoming season and if the Canadiens can present extra maturation as a workforce, then Suzuki may discover himself within the Hart dialog.
