The 2026 NHL Awards, Graded

Back in April we filled out the 2026 NHL awards ballot before the league did. Hart to Kucherov, Norris to Werenski, Calder to Schaefer. Two months later the envelopes are open, and the prediction card came back almost spotless. This is the 2026 NHL Awards, graded against what we called, and the headline number is the tightest of them all: the Ten-Point Hart.

Awards season used to be one June night. In 2026 it stretched across six weeks of staggered announcements, from the Rocket Richard in April to the Hart in June. Here is every major winner, how close the votes actually were, and where the April forecast nailed it.

• The grade: the three marquee predictions (Hart, Norris, Calder) all hit.
• The shocker margin: Kucherov won the Hart by just 10 points over Connor McDavid.
• The runaway: Matthew Schaefer won the Calder unanimously, the first since 1992-93.
• The milestone: McDavid's fifth Ted Lindsay tied Wayne Gretzky's record.

The Ten-Point Hart

The MVP race was supposed to be McDavid's to lose, and he very nearly won it. Instead the Ten-Point Hart went to Nikita Kucherov, who edged Connor McDavid 1,436 to 1,426 in voting points, with Nathan MacKinnon a distant third at 1,297. It is Kucherov's second Hart and one of the closest races in years. Anyone who watched Tampa Bay all season saw it coming.

Thanks for this honor. Just really grateful for my teammates, coaches, my family. This means a lot.

That is Kucherov at the podium. McDavid, gracious in the narrowest of defeats, found his own consolation in the players' award:

This award, coming from the guys that you play against every single night and battle against every single night and to have them recognize me for an award like this means so much.

He was talking about the Ted Lindsay, voted by the players, which he won for the fifth time to tie Gretzky. McDavid finished the year leading the league with 138 points. The Hart and the Ted Lindsay splitting between the two best players alive is the cleanest summary of the 2026 season there is.

The full board

Eight major trophies, and the favorites mostly held. The full slate:

Two storylines jump off that board. Tampa Bay swept three of them, with Kucherov, Vasilevskiy and Cooper all honored, even as the Lightning's season ended short of a title. And Montreal quietly doubled up, with Suzuki taking the Selke and Caufield the Lady Byng, the kind of two-trophy night a rebuild dreams about. For the full ceremony rundown, our complete 2026 NHL Awards winners list has every result.

The goaltending crown stayed in Tampa as well. Andrei Vasilevskiy won the Vezina on 17 first-place votes, ahead of the Islanders' Ilya Sorokin and Boston's Jeremy Swayman, capping a Lightning year that produced three individual winners but none of the team hardware the franchise actually chases. The goal-scoring title, meanwhile, went west. Nathan MacKinnon edged Cole Caufield 53 goals to 51 for his first Rocket Richard, the lone piece of silverware the Colorado star had somehow never claimed. Add it up and the season's individual honors scattered across nine cities, which is its own kind of statement after years of the same handful of names hoarding everything.

The unanimous teenager

The most lopsided vote belonged to an 18-year-old. New York Islanders defenseman Matthew Schaefer won the Calder Trophy on all 198 first-place ballots, the first unanimous rookie of the year since Teemu Selanne in 1992-93. We tabbed him in April, but nobody pencils in unanimous. He turned the rookie race, tracked all season in our Calder Trophy race coverage, into a formality by February.

On the back end, Zach Werenski gave Columbus its first Norris, out-pointing Cale Makar 1,589 to 1,191 with 113 first-place votes. It is the rare year the trophy left the usual addresses, and our breakdown of Werenski's Norris case laid out why the mid-market star earned it.

The coaching photo finish

If the Hart was close, the Jack Adams was a thriller. Jon Cooper won coach of the year with 226 points, three clear of Buffalo's Lindy Ruff (223) and just ahead of Pittsburgh's Dan Muse (199), the tightest three-way race since results were first published in 1983-84. Cooper's reaction said everything about a long-tenured coach finally getting the nod:

OK, you got me. I never thought this day would come.

The April Forecast, Graded

So how did the card do? The three trophies we committed to in April, Hart, Norris and Calder, all came home. The misses were in the margins, not the names: nobody had the Hart finishing inside ten points, and nobody had a unanimous Calder. The Ten-Point Hart is the lesson of the whole season, that the gap between the two best players in the world came down to a handful of down-ballot votes. Predicting the winner is the easy part. Predicting how little separates greatness is the part that humbles everyone. For the seasons bookending this one, our Hall of Fame 2026 class and the Stanley Cup result close the book on 2026, and the 2027 Cup odds open the next one.

5 min read · ~950 words · Sources: NHL.com, NHLPA, ESPN

How we checked this: every winner, vote total and margin is verified against the official NHL.com award announcements and NHLPA release; the Kucherov, McDavid and Cooper quotes are quoted verbatim from NHL.com. The Hart margin (1,436-1,426) and the unanimous Calder (198/198) are confirmed against the published voting results.