There is value to be found in Colorado Avalanche star’s Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar odds to win the NHL MVP Award this season.
With the 2022-23 NHL season approaching, bettors are starting to line up their future bets for the upcoming season. We looked at the Colorado Avalanche being the unsurprising favorite to repeat as Stanley Cup Champions last week. Given the Avalanche’s status as the top overall team in the NHL, their two best players- MacKinnon and Makar- have potential to win some more hardware this season.
Edmonton Oilers superstar Connor McDavid is the consensus favorite to win his third Hart Trophy, with Makar and MacKinnon not far behind.
Check out the full odds to win the NHL MVP below:
There's currently a huge drop off in the "best" player in the NHL discussion following McDavid. After all, it's entirely possible that we haven't seen a talent as great as McDavid since Wayne Gretzky. Even so, playing alongside Draisaitl on an Oilers team that has underperformed in recent years may provide the opportunity for others to win the Hart Trophy.
The most striking value bets when looking at the betting odds are where MacKinnon and Makar are listed, especially after their dominant finish to the 2021-22 season.
Makar was the most dominant player on any team in last year's playoffs, resulting in him winning the Conn Smythe Trophy following Colorado's Stanley Cup Championship. At just 23 years of age, Makar is already a top defenseman in the NHL. The scary part is that he may only be getting better.
In 2021-22, Makar scored 28 goals with 58 assists before notching 29 points in just 20 playoff games.
“I’m not focused on anything accolade wise, at all. Everybody keeps asking me: How are going to top next year?” Makar said into a microphone at the beginning of Avalanche training camp. “It’s not about that for me. I just want to kind of be the same player. Play my game and make sure that I can contribute on both ends of the ice for my team every single night.”
A more likely scenario this season might be that Makar's teammate, MacKinnon, wins his first Hart Trophy.
MacKinnon played in just 65 games last season due to an injury. He was able to score 32 goals with 56 assists in his shortened season, and he hopes to build on that in the 2022-23 season.
In the offseason, MacKinnon signed an eight-year contract extension with the team that will pay him $12.6 million per season. That makes him the highest paid player in the NHL.
"Obviously it's really cool, for sure. Hoping there's no more pandemics and the cap goes up even more, but, yeah, I think the term was the most important thing," MacKinnon sad. "I just wanted to be here for the rest of my career and hopefully I get another deal after this, too."
In his nine NHL seasons, MacKinnon has already been an MVP finalist three times, finishing second in 2017-18 and 2019-20.
The Avalanche are far and away the best team in the NHL and there's no real reason to believe it won't remain that way in the 2022-23 season. If they can remain atop the standings, expect MacKinnon and/or Makar to be in the MVP conversation all season long.
