- Nathan MacKinnon opens as the Rocket Richard favorite at +475 after a 53-goal season
- Macklin Celebrini sits second on the board heading into his age-20 year
- Read below for the full top 10 and the names lurking outside it
Nathan MacKinnon is the safest bet to keep the goal-scoring crown in Colorado, and that is about the only thing anyone agrees on.
Matt Larkin of Daily Faceoff put the Avalanche center at No. 1 on his top 10 Rocket Richard candidates for 2026-27, and bet365 has him at +475, the shortest price on the board.
His case is built on volume. MacKinnon scored 53 last season for his first Rocket, hit 51 two years before that, and has led the NHL in shots on goal three straight seasons.
Watch all 53 of them:
Macklin Celebrini lands second at +950, which is remarkable for a player who turns 20 this season. His 115-point sophomore year included 45 goals, and the talent around him in San Jose keeps improving. Take a look at what 45 goals at 19 looks like:
Cole Caufield sits third after burying 19 goals in his final 24 games and finishing two behind MacKinnon. Larkin’s one hesitation is the 19.8 shooting percentage that came with it, easily a career high.
Check out the night Caufield became the first Canadien in 36 years to reach 50:
Here is how the rest of the board shakes out:
- 4. Leon Draisaitl, Oilers (+550)
- 5. Cutter Gauthier, Ducks (+3500)
- 6. Wyatt Johnston, Stars (+1600)
- 7. Tage Thompson, Sabres (+1800)
- 8. Connor McDavid, Oilers (+1400)
- 9. Kirill Kaprizov, Wild (+850)
- 10. Auston Matthews, Maple Leafs (+1000)
Matthews at the bottom of a goal-scoring list still reads strangely. He has three Rockets and, even after missing 15 and 22 games the past two seasons, he has one more goal through 689 career games than Alex Ovechkin did at the same point.
Health is the whole question in Toronto, though the arrival of Gavin McKenna should put a real playmaker back on his power play.
Gauthier is the fun one at +3500. He scored 41 as a sophomore, ranked first in the league in individual shot attempts per 60 at five-on-five, and should see a bigger workload in Anaheim once his contract gets done.
David Pastrnak, Nikita Kucherov, Kyle Connor, Mikko Rantanen and Ovechkin all landed in the honorable mention pile, which tells you how crowded this is. McDavid tops our Hart Trophy board and he still only ranks eighth here.
The past two seasons produced 23 different 40-goal campaigns from 22 different players. Tage Thompson is the only man who did it twice.
