2026 Hart Trophy Odds: Will Connor McDavid Win His Fourth NHL MVP?

• Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Nikita Kucherov are the 2026 Hart Trophy finalists
• McDavid leads the Kalshi market at 52% to win his fourth career Hart Trophy
• See my Hart Trophy odds breakdown, each finalist’s case, and my prediction for the 2026 NHL MVP below

Three former winners. Three monster regular seasons. Only one Hart Trophy on the line. The NHL announced the 2026 Hart Memorial Trophy finalists on May 8, and it’s exactly the trio you’d expect: Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Nikita Kucherov.

Traditional sportsbooks pulled their MVP markets at the end of the regular season once PHWA voting closed, so prediction markets are the only live game in town.

Here’s my Hart Trophy odds breakdown, each finalist’s case, and my pick for the 2026 NHL MVP.

2026 Hart Trophy Odds

Kalshi is the only place I’m finding live action on this market. Contracts trade between 1¢ and 99¢, with the Yes price reflecting the implied probability that a player wins the award.

All three finalists have dipped recently. McDavid is down 5 points, Kucherov down 6, and MacKinnon down 2 as traders cycle positions. Total market volume sits at $1.57 million, easily the most-traded NHL Awards market on the board. The tight spread on McDavid (51¢ Yes, 50¢ No) tells you this race is genuinely live.

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2026 Hart Trophy odds via Kalshi as of May 8. New users can grab a Kalshi referral code to bet on the NHL Awards.

The McDavid Case

McJesus put up 138 points in 82 games (48G, 90A) to claim his sixth Art Ross Trophy, tied for the second-most scoring titles in NHL history. The number alone gets him on every ballot.

What sealed the MVP narrative was his run without Leon Draisaitl. After Draisaitl went down with a lower-body injury on March 15, McDavid posted 10 goals and 19 points across 11 games and dragged Edmonton through the Pacific race solo. The Oilers didn’t win a game all year without McDavid recording a point.

The gap between McDavid and the next Oiler scorer hit 36 points by season’s end. The “most valuable to his team” argument doesn’t get cleaner than that.

The Kucherov Case

Kucherov was the most efficient scorer in the league. His 130 points in 76 games came out to a league-best 1.71 points per game, and he outpaced his nearest Lightning teammate by 42 points. That was the second-largest gap between a team’s top two scorers in the entire NHL.

Tampa kept its nine-year playoff streak alive in arguably the toughest division in hockey, and Kucherov was the engine that did it. The case against him is the games-played gap. He played six fewer games than McDavid and finished eight points behind in the Art Ross race.

The MacKinnon Case

MacKinnon led the NHL with 53 goals to win his first Rocket Richard Trophy and finished with 127 points and a +57 rating. Colorado set a franchise record with 121 points, and Nate was the engine of the league’s best team.

The problem with his case is the depth around him. Cale Makar, Martin Necas and a stacked Avs roster make it harder to argue Colorado falls apart without him. He also won the Hart in 2024, and back-to-back winners are rare. His odds crashed at the end of the regular season after Wayne Gretzky publicly endorsed McDavid.

2026 Hart Trophy Prediction

I’m taking Connor McDavid for my Hart Trophy prediction. The Art Ross plus the Draisaitl-less heroics make him the most complete MVP package on the board.

Kucherov at 39% is the legitimate dark horse, and a coin-flip Yes/No spread on McDavid tells you traders aren’t sleeping on him either. If you wanted to fade the favorite, that’s where I’d go.

Wrapping up my Hart Trophy odds analysis, MacKinnon at 11% is a pass for me. The Gretzky endorsement of McDavid was a real signal, and the back-to-back factor is too steep a hill.