TORONTO — The NHL hasn’t had a tru­ly cap­ti­vat­ing chase for the league scor­ing title since the year before Con­nor McDavid entered the league.

McDavid has won five of the past sev­en Art Ross Tro­phies — four in lop­sided fash­ion. Two sea­sons ago, there was a rel­a­tive­ly close race until McDavid col­lect­ed 13 points in his final five games. The two years McDavid didn’t win by eight-plus points, some­one else did.

The last great, down-to-the-wire race for the scor­ing crown came in 2014–15, when Jamie Benn edged out John Tavares by one point and Sid­ney Cros­by by three.

If the past month of the 2023–24 NHL sea­son is an indi­ca­tion, the league could be in for an all-time great duel between Avalanche star Nathan MacK­in­non and Light­ning mae­stro Niki­ta Kucherov. For five con­sec­u­tive days last week before both teams began their extend­ed break, the NHL scor­ing lead changed hands as the two All-Stars answered one great per­for­mance with anoth­er on alter­nat­ing schedules.

“He’s going to be a tough guy to beat, that’s for sure,” MacK­in­non said of Kucherov. “He’s one of the smartest play­ers, if not the smartest in the league. I def­i­nite­ly admire his game a lot. I think he’s very dif­fer­ent from my game, and I can take a lot from it – the way he can slow things down. He’s got no pulse. It’s like he knows what the right play is every time.”

Kucherov has won the Art Ross and the Hart Tro­phy as league MVP before — both items that are not cur­rent­ly on MacKinnon’s resume. He swept those awards in 2018–19, when he fin­ished with a career-high 128 points.

It looks like Kucherov will need to estab­lish anoth­er one to win a sec­ond scor­ing title. Both Kucherov and MacK­in­non are on pace for about 140 points. Kucherov has a slight lead, with 85 points in 49 games, though he missed one con­test. MacK­in­non sits one behind with 84 in 49, hav­ing appeared in all of Colorado’s games.

“He’s a hell of a play­er,” Kucherov said of MacK­in­non. “He’s been a top play­er all of his life. It’s his con­sis­ten­cy. He’s such a fun play­er to watch, so fast. I think the thing he’s got­ten bet­ter at is slow­ing the game down.”

Both play­ers got off to rel­a­tive­ly slow starts, rel­a­tive to their stan­dard. MacK­in­non had just nine points in his first 10 games, while Kucherov had 11 in his first 10.

Kucherov hit the accel­er­a­tor first, with 11 points in his next three con­tests to grab the NHL lead on Nov. 7. He yield­ed it for a cou­ple weeks, but a six-point night Nov. 24 set this poten­tial Art Ross cam­paign in motion. Kucherov has led the league in points or been sec­ond to MacK­in­non after every game he’s played since.

MacK­in­non had one point Nov. 24, and that point trailed Kucherov by 11. But that was also game No. 3 of his cur­rent, remark­able 33-con­test scor­ing spree. MacK­in­non has at least one point in all but one of those games, and 64 total.

There are only six oth­er play­ers in the NHL who have as many points this sea­son (64) as MacK­in­non has since Nov. 20.

“I’ve said it before, but you seem him ele­vate his game in the play­offs and you just don’t think he can find anoth­er lev­el but some­how he does,” Cros­by said. “That’s what great play­ers do. He’s just been on a tear. He’s mak­ing it look easy, but it’s not. I’m hap­py to see him doing well. I see it first­hand in the sum­mers, how hard he works and what it means to him.”

A four-point and a five-point effort in a three-game span in Decem­ber helped close the gap, but MacK­in­non has real­ly made this a fan­tas­tic bat­tle in Jan­u­ary. He began 2024 with back-to-back three-point nights to pull even with Kucherov for the first time on Jan. 4.

The two were even again on two more occa­sions over the next two weeks. MacK­in­non held the out­right lead for the first time at the end of the night Jan. 20, after a hat trick-plus-an-assist in a Philadel­phia matinee.

That start­ed this game of vir­tu­al tug-of-war on ice. Kucherov reclaimed the lead three days lat­er with a four-point game. MacK­in­non answered the next night with sec­ond five-point out­ing of the season.

Kucherov answered back with three the next evening. Then MacK­in­non respond­ed with two in his last game before the break. Kucherov had one more con­test the next night, and two more points edged him back in front for the third time in five days.

“It’s always fun to be at the top and com­pete against the top guys,” Kucherov said. “I’m just excit­ed to go out there and play every game and help my team win. I can’t take any nights off.”

How should we hand­i­cap this race the rest of the way? Tam­pa Bay has an eas­i­er sched­ule. The Lightning’s slate is 22nd in the strength of sched­ule, accord­ing to Tankathon, while the Avalanche have the eighth-toughest.

Both teams have 16 home games remain­ing. Both teams are in the mid­dle of sig­nif­i­cant post­sea­son bat­tles — the Avs are like­ly to tan­gle with Dal­las and Win­nipeg for the top spot in the Cen­tral, while the Light­ning are in a three-way tus­sle for third in the Atlantic with Toron­to and Detroit.

MacK­in­non had the slight­ly hot­ter hand enter­ing the All-Star break. Kucherov had sev­en games with three or more points in his final 19, and 36 points total in that span. MacK­in­non has 42 points in his past 19.

“I think I’m just see­ing things well out there right now,” MacK­in­non said. “Plays are devel­op­ing a lit­tle slow­er, in a good way. It’s a fast game, so when you can kind of see things as they come, I try to make the best deci­sion that I can. That’s kind of what Kucherov does every time. I’m always try­ing to work on play-mak­ing, vision, things like that. Right now, it’s been pret­ty good.”

If this con­tin­ues to be an any­thing you can do, I can do bet­ter back-and-forth, MacK­in­non does have one more game left and that could be a big deal. Kucherov’s final game of the sea­son is April 17 against the Maple Leafs, when Aus­ton Matthews could be shoot­ing for 70 goals.

One night lat­er, MacK­in­non will get the final say with a game at Ball Are­na against McDavid and the Oil­ers. Oh by the way, McDavid is third in points per game this sea­son, and absolute­ly capa­ble of a heater that helps him back into this dis­cus­sion despite trail­ing the lead­ers by 17 and 18 right now.

It could set up for the last two nights of the reg­u­lar sea­son to be like some­thing the NHL hasn’t seen in almost a decade.

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