Winners of three stat-based NHL awards confirmed

Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews (34) took home his third Maurice Rocket Richard Trophy.

With the last day of the regular season schedule behind us, the three major stat-based award winners for the 2023-24 season are set in stone. Lightning right wing Nikita Kucherov has won his second career Art Ross Trophy as the overall scoring champion, while Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews takes home his third Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy after setting the salary cap era goal-scoring record. Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck clinched his first William M. Jennings Trophy, with Winnipeg allowing the fewest goals against in the league.

Kucherov’s season was a franchise-defining performance in every sense offensively. With a Lightning record of 144 points (44 goals, 100 assists) in 81 games, Kucherov finished four points clear of Avalanche pivot Nathan MacKinnon. He joins Martin St. Louis as the only Tampa player to win the Art Ross multiple times and becomes the fourth active player to do so, alongside Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Connor McDavid.

The 30-year-old Russian contributed to exactly half of the Lightning’s 288 total goals and will be the favorite in what’s expected to be an extremely tight Hart Trophy race with Crosby, MacKinnon, Matthews and McDavid all as potential challengers. He’s the 12th player to register points on at least 50 percent of his team’s scoring within a single season.

Kucherov capped off his regular season Wednesday in Toronto by becoming the fifth player in league history to put up 100 assists in a single season, joining McDavid, who’d only done it two days before. He registered a point 68 of his 81 appearances, including 41 multi-point games, 23 three-point efforts, and eight games with at least four points.

Matthews, who takes home his third goal-scoring title in four years in a rather dominant fashion, is not to be ignored. His 69 goals in 81 games were a Maple Leafs’ record and the most in a single season since Penguins star Mario Lemieux in 1995-96. He was 12 goals ahead of second-place Panthers winger Sam Reinhart. He became the second player in the modern era to record hat tricks in his first two games. His 18 multi-goal performances were the most since the Sabres’ Alexander Mogilny in the early ’90s.

Hellebuyck adds to his trophy case ahead of his seven-year, $59.5M extension kicking in next season. The Jets were the only team to allow fewer than 200 goals, and the three-time Vezina finalist is mostly responsible, posting a .921 SV%, five shutouts and a league-leading 33.1 goals saved above expected, per MoneyPuck. He was a wide margin ahead of Canucks starter Thatcher Demko in that category, who had 22.0 GSAx, while Panthers backup Anthony Stolarz managed to work his way into the top three with 20.1 GSAx despite making only 27 appearances. As he was the only Jets netminder to play more than 25 games, he’s the first sole recipient of the award since the Kings’ Jonathan Quick in 2018. The 30-year-old held opponents to three or fewer goals in 50 of his 60 appearances.

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