We do not envy those who had to vote on this year’s league MVP, because there were far too many candidates to choose from.

The three nominees are well deserving, but voters may have left off the most deserving of the award, Vancouver-born Macklin Celebrini. What Celebrini did to uplift an uninspiring, still-rebuilding San Jose Sharks team this season deserves acknowledgment.

Celebrini scored 45 goals and 70 assists for 115 points, which ranks fourth in NHL scoring this season. Individually, his 45 goals finished seventh in league scoring, as did his 70 assists. However, the biggest reason for his candidacy is the point gap on his next-best Sharks teammate.

With 115 points, Celebrini finished with 56 more points than his next closest teammate, Will Smith, who has 59. That is the biggest point gap between top-scoring teammates in the NHL. The only four players who had 30 or more points than their next closest teammate were Nikita Kucherov (42), Connor McDavid (41) and David Pastrnak (32). If that’s not most valuable player quality, we aren’t sure what is.

Despite all of this, Celebrini is not a finalist for league MVP. His efforts were recognized by his peers, however, as he was nominated for the Ted Lindsay Award, which is the most outstanding player award, voted on by the NHLPA. That goes to show the elite-level talent that these three players displayed this season:

Kucherov, 32, matched his career-high of 44 goals this season, adding 86 assists to total 130 points in 76 games. Believe it or not, that’s 14 points shy of his career-high 144 points he scored in 2023-24. The big difference for Kucherov this season is that he was much better defensively at 5v5, as he set a career-high of a plus-43 rating. Kucherov won the honour of league MVP in 2018-19, and finished runner-up in 2023-24 after putting up 100 assists. This will only be his third nomination for the award in his career, despite being second among active players in points-per-game.

MacKinnon, 30, reached the 50-goal mark for only the second time in his 13-year NHL career, setting a new personal best of 53. On top of that, his 74 assists added up to a 127-point total on the year. That was 27 points more than his next-best teammate in Martin Necas, who scored 100. MacKinnon was the best player on the league’s best team this season, which helped him finish with a plus-53 rating. After three nominations in six years, MacKinnon finally took home the league MVP honour in 2023-24, narrowly edging out Kucherov. Will history repeat itself in 2025-26?

McDavid, 29, put forth the second-best season of his career, which is crazy to say considering this was viewed as a down year by Edmonton Oilers standards. His 48 goals and 90 assists were a personal second-best to his 64 goals in 2022-23 and 100 assists in 2023-24. McDavid finished 41 points ahead of the next-best Oiler, Leon Draisaitl; however, that point total would have been lower had it not been for a late-season injury to his German teammate. McDavid is viewed as the best player in the league, and he has been recognized as such over the last nine years, winning three Hart Trophies and being nominated for six over that time.