The New York Post's Larry Brooks believes that those opposed to Patrick Kane's candidacy for the Hart Trophy based upon last summer's events should pipe down:

I have no idea whether or not I would want Patrick Kane to date my sister. I don’t know him except from afar and through a locker-room interview scrum or two. But that hypothetical would not inform my choice for the Hart Trophy if I were to have a ballot, nor should it become an issue when votes are cast immediately after the regular season.

There is no morals clause attached to the Hart, which goes to, “The player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team.”

At this point, with Kane on a franchise-record tying 21-game point streak he aims to break Sunday night, the Blackhawks’ winger is the MVP frontrunner, with Dallas’ James Neal and Tyler Seguin and the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist, the Islanders’ John Tavares and Washington’s Alex Ovechkin also in the conversation.

This is a case about hockey. There is nothing more to see here beyond Kane’s brilliance on the ice, just as the Erie County’s DA office decided there was nothing more to see in the “so-called ‘case’ ” there, either.

Brooks continues...