Rumor: Hart Trophy winner leaked on the NHL's own website.

What a screw up!

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 3 years ago
Rumor: Hart Trophy winner leaked on the NHL's own website.

We have what appears to be some very breaking news to report.

According to a report from Finnish website Iltalehtithe National Hockey League's own website appears to have prematurely leaked the announcement of this year's Hart Memorial Trophy winner. They report that at 5:14 pm Finnish time the website appears to have mistakenly announced that Edmonton Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl will be this year's winner.

The website was not the NHL.com that we all frequent here in North America, but rather would have been the Finnish language version of the league's website. This helps paint a picture of why this mistaker may have happened, given that the National Hockey League has planned to make the announcements in its own right later this evening. The screw up may have merely been caused by some confusion between the different time zones, although I must admit that this is only speculation my part at this time. 

Draisaitl was competing for the award against New York Rangers forward Artemi Panarin and Colorado Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon and although all 3 players had a case for winning it, there's little doubt that Draisaitl was the odds on favorite to win the award this time around. the oilers forward was coming off an insane performance during the regular season in which he scored 43 goals and 67 assists for a combined total of 110 points in just 71 games. The only bad thing about Draisaitl's season really is the fact that we will never get to see what he could have done in the final games of the season to really push his point total forward.

I'm not ready to declare that Draisaitl is the winner just yet and that is why I have qualified this as a rumor at this time. The winner was after all leaked by accident via the Finnish website, so there's always the possibility that they also announced the wrong winner by accident as well. Honestly I doubt that this is the case, but I don't want to risk misinforming our readers on this particular story. 

If this is indeed accurate, and I suspect it is, you do have to feel bad for the NHL a little given that their big announcement tonight has been spoiled.

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