The Art Ross Trophy is an award given to the National Hockey League (NHL) player who leads the league in scoring points at the end of the regular season.
It was presented to the NHL by former player, general manager and head coach Art Ross.
The trophy has been awarded 61 times to 25 players since its inception in the 1947–48 NHL season.
The scoring title came nine years after St. Louis won the Art Ross in 2003–04 (the longest gap between wins by any player in NHL history).
At the age of 37, Martin St. Louis is the oldest player to win the scoring championship, displacing Bill Cook, who was 36 years old when he won it while playing for the 1932–33 New York Rangers.
The Art Ross Trophy was presented to the National Hockey League in 1947 by Arthur Howie "Art" Ross, former general manager and head coach of the Boston Bruins and Hockey Hall of Fame inductee as a player.
Elmer Lach was the winner of the first Art Ross Trophy, which was awarded at the conclusion of the 1947–48 NHL season.
Players from the Pittsburgh Penguins have won the trophy 14 times (within 24 seasons); players from the Montreal Canadiens have won it nine times; and the Chicago Blackhawks have seen players win the award eight times.
For two decades, from 1981 to 2001, only three players won the Art Ross Trophy: Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. The streak ended when
Jarome Iginla won the trophy in 2002.
Wayne Gretzky won the Art Ross Trophy 10 times, including seven consecutive, during his 20-year NHL career.
Gordie Howe and Mario Lemieux each won it six times while Phil Esposito and Jaromir Jagr each have five. Jagr (from the Czech Republic) has won the award the most times out of non-Canadians.
Gretzky is the only player to win the trophy for more than one team while Joe Thornton is the only player to win it while playing for two different teams in one season.
Stan Mikita is the only player in NHL history to win the Art Ross, Hart and Lady Byng trophies all in the same season and he did it twice (1966–67 and 1967–68).
Only one defenseman has won the NHL scoring title, Bobby Orr (who did it in 1969–70 and 1974–75) also the only player to capture four individual awards as he won the Hart, Norris, and Conn Smythe Trophies in 1970 as well.
In 2007, 19-year-old Sidney Crosby not only became the youngest player to win the Art Ross Trophy, he is the youngest scoring champion in any major North American professional sport.
At almost twice Crosby's age, Martin St. Louis became the oldest player to capture the Art Ross at the age of 37, also having the longest gap between scoring titles (nine years).
Henrik and Daniel Sedin are the only siblings to win the award, in 2009–10 and 2010–11, respectively.
Since 2001, only two players: Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin and Tampa Bay's Martin St. Louis have won the award more than one time, Malkin doing so twice in 2008–09 and 2011–12, and St. Louis doing so twice in 2003–04 and 2012–13.
The NHL rules stipulate three tiebreakers in case two or more players are tied in points:
Player with most goals
Player with fewer games played
Player scoring first goal of the season
Scoring ties happened in the 1961–62, 1979–80, and 1994–95 NHL seasons, all of them being decided by the first tiebreaker of scoring more goals.
Interestingly, the NHL's award to recognize the leading goal-scorer, the Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy does not have a tiebreaker so multiple winners can be recognized in one season.
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