McDavid Leads the First 2027 Hart Race — but Celebrini Is Coming Fast
GOATIFYThe NHL season has not started yet, but the shape of the 2027 Hart Trophy race is already unusually clear: Connor McDavid is the benchmark, Macklin Celebrini is no longer a prospect story, and a crowded group of established stars has enough surrounding context to make this one of the most interesting MVP races in years.
McDavid enters the season with three Hart Trophies, five Ted Lindsay Awards and a much bigger unfinished objective hanging over Edmonton. The Oilers have been close enough to the Stanley Cup to make every regular-season conversation feel secondary, yet that same pressure is exactly why another monster McDavid season is easy to imagine. He is going into the final year of his contract, Edmonton still needs him to drive almost everything offensively, and the path back to June probably requires another MVP-level campaign.
But this is not a one-player race. Celebrini's second NHL season changed the scale of what is realistic for him. Nathan MacKinnon remains one of the league's safest bets to combine production, durability and team success. Nikita Kucherov is the reigning Hart winner. Nick Suzuki has added elite two-way value to triple-digit scoring. And even the lower half of the early top 10 contains former winners, record-setting stars and players with obvious statistical upside.
Here is the early GOATIFY read on the ten names setting the pace before opening night.
McDavid is No. 1 because Edmonton may need everything he has
Start at the top with McDavid. He finished second in Hart voting last season despite leading the NHL in scoring while Leon Draisaitl missed meaningful time. The result did not suddenly change the league's view of McDavid; it mostly showed how strong Kucherov's winning case became. McDavid remains the player every other candidate is measured against.
The strongest argument for him in 2026-27 is not voter reputation. It is circumstance. Edmonton has reached consecutive Stanley Cup Finals without finishing the job, and the roster now looks less forgiving around its superstars. If the Oilers are going to make another deep run, McDavid will probably have to control games at an absurd level from October onward. That gives him the combination Hart voters usually reward: huge individual production, obvious dependence from his team and a season with real stakes attached to every point.
Draisaitl sits eighth in the early ranking, which says more about the difficulty of sharing a roster with McDavid than it does about his own ceiling. He has topped 100 points in four of the last five seasons and still reached 97 in an injury-affected year. Draisaitl has already proven he can win the Hart while playing beside McDavid. A healthier season can put him back in the conversation, but it is hard to begin an Edmonton MVP projection anywhere other than No. 97.
Celebrini is the immediate challenger at No. 2, and that placement would have sounded aggressive only a year ago. His leap from 25 goals and 63 points as a rookie to 45 goals and 115 points in year two turned potential into production. He also looked completely comfortable among established stars for Canada at the Olympics, scoring five goals and producing 10 points in six games.
The next step is team relevance. San Jose pushed into the playoff conversation sooner than expected last season without quite getting there. If Celebrini drives the Sharks into an actual postseason berth while staying anywhere near his 115-point pace, his case becomes extremely difficult to dismiss. MVP voting often rewards the player whose value changes what a franchise believes is possible. Celebrini has a chance to be exactly that player.
MacKinnon and Kucherov make the top four brutally difficult to crack
Nathan MacKinnon begins at No. 3, and there may be no safer high-end Hart candidate in the league. He has been a finalist five times in the last nine seasons, won the award in 2023-24 and has built the kind of physical routine that keeps his availability remarkably stable. He has missed only five games across the past three seasons, an enormous advantage in an award race where a two-week absence can erase a statistical lead.
Colorado also enters the year with the exact kind of motivation that can sharpen an MVP campaign. The Avalanche were brilliant in the regular season, MacKinnon led the league in goals, and then Vegas swept them in the Western Conference Final. Cale Makar's massive new extension keeps the core intact, but it also underlines the urgency. This is not a team building toward some distant window. Colorado expects to win now.
Makar himself is No. 10. That ranking comes with one huge historical obstacle: defensemen almost never win the Hart. Chris Pronger in 2000 remains the last one to do it. Makar nevertheless has the résumé to make the possibility feel less absurd than it would for almost any other defenseman. He is a two-time Norris winner, a Conn Smythe winner and has already produced 90-point seasons from the blue line. The problem is obvious: to be the league's MVP, he may first have to convince voters he was more valuable to Colorado than MacKinnon.
Kucherov at No. 4 has the opposite problem. Nobody needs to be convinced that a winger can win the award because he just did. At 33, the Tampa Bay star is coming off another season over 100 points, extending that streak to four years. He also reached career highs with 44 goals and a plus-43 rating. The Lightning have refused to age quietly, and Kucherov remains the central reason.
There can be a temptation to downgrade a reigning winner before the next season begins, especially when the field includes younger names with fresher narratives. Kucherov's answer is simple: keep scoring. If Tampa remains a contender and he again lives near the top of the points race, novelty will not matter much.
Suzuki, Kaprizov and Hellebuyck have three very different MVP paths
Nick Suzuki at No. 5 may be the most complete candidate outside the top four. His progression has been steady rather than explosive, but last season finally pushed him into a different tier. He won the Selke Trophy, finished fifth in Hart voting and captained Montreal to the Eastern Conference Final while becoming only the third player in NHL history to combine a Selke-winning season with at least 100 points.
That is the kind of profile that gives voters multiple ways to justify a ballot. Suzuki does not need to win the scoring title if Montreal takes another step and he remains the engine at both ends of the rink. The Canadiens are also young enough that another improvement feels plausible rather than forced. If the team moves from surprise contender to established one, its captain will receive a large share of the credit.
Kirill Kaprizov is sixth, and his path is more statistical. Minnesota has front-office questions, including the unresolved Quinn Hughes extension and the search for a true first-line center, but Kaprizov's own target is easier to define: push into 50-goal, 100-point territory. He reached 108 points in his healthiest season and produced 45 goals and 89 points in 78 games last year. A full season with Hughes running the power play and Matt Boldy continuing to grow gives Kaprizov a legitimate runway toward career numbers.
Connor Hellebuyck at No. 7 is the wild card in every sense. The Winnipeg goaltender has requested a trade, so his final team context remains unsettled. Goalies rarely win the Hart, but Hellebuyck did it only two seasons ago. He also arrives with the confidence of a defining Olympic run for the United States after years in which Winnipeg's playoff exits were used against his broader reputation.
A trade could either complicate his case or strengthen it. If Hellebuyck lands with a stronger defensive team and immediately transforms a contender, the value argument almost writes itself. If uncertainty drags through the season, the disruption could work the other way. No player in this top 10 has a larger unknown attached to his environment.
Marner and Makar round out a top 10 with almost no easy outs
Mitch Marner opens at No. 9 after a season in which his move to Vegas went from adjustment period to breakthrough. His postseason was the loudest evidence: 29 points in 22 games to lead the league, including a natural hat trick in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final that became the fastest playoff hat trick in Finals history at six minutes and 10 seconds.
Vegas will ask even more of its top offensive players this year, especially without Pavel Dorofeyev. Marner now has a full season of comfort in the Golden Knights system and a playoff run that removed any doubt about whether his game could scale with the stakes. A bigger regular-season share of the offense could turn him from a peripheral Hart candidate into a serious one.
Then there is Makar, whose No. 10 spot almost feels unfair until the names above him are considered. His eight-year, $163.2 million extension reset the financial standard for defensemen and reinforced Colorado's belief that it has one of the most valuable players in hockey. The Hart challenge is structural rather than talent-based. He needs a historically strong defenseman season, and he probably needs to separate himself from MacKinnon inside the same lineup.
That leaves the early hierarchy with an interesting split. McDavid, MacKinnon and Kucherov are established MVP machinery. Celebrini, Suzuki and Kaprizov can change their standing by dragging rising teams upward. Hellebuyck's season could be transformed by a trade. Marner is trying to carry playoff dominance into a full regular season. Makar is fighting history and his own superstar teammate at the same time.
McDavid deserves the first spot because no player combines individual ceiling, team dependence and immediate championship pressure quite like he does. But Celebrini at No. 2 is the signal that this race may not look familiar for long. If San Jose's young star takes another leap, the NHL could spend the season watching one generation's standard get chased in real time by the next one.
