Strike 2: Around here, we are constantly battling with the ever-present East Coast Media Bias.

It’s real, and it’s spectacularly bad.

If you still don’t buy that, just google the latest from ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith.

But there’s a different kind of bias, the “Canadian hockey bias,” that will likely end up costing Colorado Avalanche superstar Nathan MacKinnon a piece of hardware that he’s well on his way to earning this year.

MacKinnon is having an MVP season. During a year in which the Avs have been wildly inconsistent but still near the top of the Western Conference standings, the 11-year vet has been having the best, most consistent season of his already stellar career. A few weeks ago, he appeared to be getting his due, as a survey of hockey writers tabbed him as the favorite to win the Hart Trophy, given to the NHL’s MVP.

Then Toronto’s Auston Matthews got scorching hot. And the Canadian hockey press got very excited.

Now, this MVP race has taken on the feel of the Nikola Jokic vs Joel Embiid saga, where the guy from flyover country starts to get overlooked, regardless of his deserving performance.

After the Avs lost another winnable game in Nashville over the weekend, MacKinnon sat in second place in the NHL in total points with 101, trailing Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov by four. The Avs star is accumulating stats the same way Jokic does – with a Zamboni-full of assists included. The pass-first center is just sixth in the league in goals, trailing Matthews, Kucherov and three others.

The darling of the hockey establishment, Connor McDavid of Edmonton, leads the league in assists, 13 ahead of MacKinnon and six ahead of Kucherov. Matthews, with a wide lead in goals scored, is nowhere to be found on the list of assist leaders. Does that remind you of a certain Philadelphia 76er?

So, like Joker, the other guy does more actual scoring, and someone else gets a few more assists. But what MacKinnon leads in is in combination, and carrying his successful team to heights they’d never ever reach without him. That makes for an easy comparison with Jokic’s value to the Denver Nuggets: Without him, they’d be a borderline playoff team at this point in the season. MacKinnon leads the Avs in everything except saves and penalty minutes. He’s the centerpiece of every top line forward combination, and the only lines with a positive in the plus/minus ratings.

In other words, the Avs without MacKinnon are much like the Nuggets when Joker is resting. Not much for the press to write about.

Yet there they are, near the top of the Western Conference standings.

Isn’t that the definition of what “Most Valuable” is supposed to be?

Regardless, now just a few weeks after MacKinnon was being considered the odds on favorite, it’s flipped, and now it’s Matthews (who won the Hart in 2022) whom the Canadian hockey press is touting as the leader in the race for this year’s trophy. Don’t be shocked if Matthews AND McDavid both finish ahead of MacKinnon in the final Hart balloting, because, Canada.

But just like Joker, that’s not the finish that MacKinnon is most concerned about anyway.