Kovacevic: Crosby has MVP wind at his back

WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- Brief and to the Point ...

• The acronym MVP has become so self-standing that we can forget the middle term in there is valuable. Even though, as definitions of valuable differ from one professional league to the next, it's almost always the greatest variable.

In the NFL, the MVP has basically been condensed to Quarterback of the Year. It's not about the best player. It's about the best player at the most important position.

In Major League Baseball, where time moves at the pace of a Yadier Molina mound visit, the MVP is generally the most proficient hitter on a winning team. Much as it's been since paying customers commuted in stagecoaches.

In the NHL?

Well, let me start, on this week where the Penguins will play here in Winnipeg and then in Edmonton, that Sidney Crosby, the league leader in goals with 34 and third in points with 69, should be considered the frontrunner for league MVP.

Not the Jets' Patrik Laine, Crosby's main competition in the goals category with 32.

Not the Oilers' Connor McDavid, the leader in points at 74.

Not the Blackhawks' surging Patrick Kane, at least not yet.

Not anyone else.

And rather than engage in any syrupy sentiment about why Crosby deserves that status currently, and bypassing the Hart Trophy's uniquely worded criteria that it should go to the player "adjudged to be most valuable to his team," I'll simply stick with the following fistful of precedent:

1. Since Bobby Orr won three MVPs in a row in 1970-72, a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for the game's greatest defenseman, forwards have won 38 times, goaltenders four times, defensemen only once. Meaning it takes something truly extraordinary for it not to be a forward. So with all due respect to the Sharks' Brent Burns, who's gaining traction in these debates because of his wonderful season, he scarcely meets the standard set by the revolutionary Orr or even Chris Pronger, the lone exception in the interim.

2. No goaltender is close to the current pack. Not even Carey Price is Carey Price this season.

3. Since the Rocket Richard Trophy was born in 1999 to reward the top goal-scorer, that player was MVP only three times, and Alexander Ovechkin has that figurative hat trick all to himself. So that alone probably wouldn't be enough for Laine, the Canadiens' Max Pacioretty, the Maple Leafs' Auston Matthews, the Kings' Jeff Carter of the Bruins' Brad Marchand, the only other ones to touch 30.

4. Since the Penguins joined the NHL in 1967 and the league doubled in size, the leader in points has also been MVP 27 of 48 times. That's only 56 percent, hardly automatic.

5. Now, mix in this: Only once has a player won the Richard, Art Ross and Hart in the same season, that being Ovechkin in 2008. It's remarkable but true. In fact, even preceding the Richard Trophy, the previous player to lead the league in goals and points while also winning MVP was -- you guessed it -- Mario Lemieux in 1996.

Add all that up, and if Crosby merely keeps scoring at his current pace — and his 1.19 points per game already lead the league — he'll fall quite nicely into that phenomenal final category and pummel beyond recognition any resonating debate.

You're welcome!

• Carl Hagelin is being paid $4 million and has scored six goals, making for some seriously expensive goals. That's been a legit disappointment, as he'll likely wind up well below his career average of 14.

In the same stride, let me say this: Anyone who doesn't grasp what Hagelin brings to a lineup needs to talk with a hockey buddy who does.

There's a reason the Rangers of last season freely cited the loss of Hagelin as the pulled cord that cut up their identity. They lost their forecheck. They lost their ability to back off defensemen between the blue lines. Above all, they lost 50/50 puck battles all over the Ice.

Anyone who elects to value a forward within the team concept strictly by goals ... wow, go ask Crosby or Evgeni Malkin, both of whom openly plead for Hagelin to be on their lines and mess up the opponents' schemes, how much he means whether he's scoring or not.

Trust me, their answer will come in a Hagelin-esque hurry.

• Ask the Capitals, too. All we heard from the Washington side after that series last spring, meaning behind the scenes, was how they had no answer over a best-of-seven for all that speed coming their way. And no one ever brings more of that than Hagelin.

• My chime on the where-does-Phil-Kessel-play brouhaha?

Half-wall, first-unit power play.

Five-on-five is significant, but what's mattered most over the course of this season regarding Kessel is already in place: The power play now runs through him. He's the quarterback.

Watch it next time you're at the rink, even at a practice in Cranberry Township.

He's the first true half-wall QB the Penguins have had since you-know-who.

• I'll keep repeating this until it's no longer relevant: There are times Mike Sullivan needs to think beyond his own go-play box and add some beef to the lineup. Wednesday night here against the big, fast and mean Jets is one of those.

Won't happen.

Just saying.

• The Capitals are all three of those, too, and they don't come with Winnipeg's weaker back line. Maybe the Blue Jackets, too.

Just saying.

• When the Steelers played at Kansas City in the playoffs a couple months back, signs all over Arrowhead proclaimed it to be 'The Loudest Stadium In The World.'

Guess that depends on one's definition of stadium.

If it's encompassing all sporting venues, Arrowhead doesn't touch the tin box in which the Penguins and Jets will face off. The noise in there, generated by actual human voices rather than sound systems or faux cannons, is close to indescribable.