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Plenty of virtual ink spilled on this topic lately, with The Athletic (and TSN’s) Pierre LeBrun polling NHL coaches, while Shayna Goldman continues to smash out relevant content, weighing in on techniques utilized by the Nashville Predators blueliner to generate offense, and finally Adam Vingan making the case for one of Cale Makar or Roman Josi to win the award outright.
The field could be easily expanded to include Victor Hedman, and Adam Fox, with a secondary listing of blueliners in Morgan Rielly, Aaron Ekblad, Makar’s regular defensive partner, Devon Toews, Kris Letang and the resurgent Shayne Gostisbehere in Arizona. Some ‘defensive defensemen’ could include Jacob Slavin, and MacKenzie Weegar. But we know the Norris isnt’ really about ‘defense’, it’s just the player designation. Results counts.
And two of these players results are breaking into records setting territory.
Typically, the Norris isn’t awarded to the defenseman that shows the best defensive ability, it’s usually a reward for the blueliner that outshines with an exceptional season and I’m actually perfectly fine using this as the primary motivation for selecting the award winner. We have viewed defensive concepts as shot blocking and boxing out players, and while those are important, the main purpose of playing defensively is to regain the puck. That’s not an isolated skill, it requires coordination with other players, in a structured system and makes it very difficult to assign individual achievement for the placement of an award. Even with the expansion of available data, capturing defensive ability is still in its infancy.
Defending has become more integral to transition and puck retrievals than blocking shots and boxing out players in defensive zone coverage.
Modern blueliners are more inclined to be joining the rush, hitting the opposition blueline with speed – or hitting four players at the zone entry – while doing some untraditional movements to keep pucks active at the top of the offensive zone.
Blueliners jump off the line with supporting players taking up a spot and moving the puck down in the offensive zone – a more common element of structure. High in zone cycling makes the blueline presence even more important.
Defensemen can be part of the offensive zone solution in a non-conforming position, perhaps below the hash marks, leading down to the goal line while teams adjust to this enhanced player movement with support up high, such as a center or winger funneling through to the net from a position beginning close to the blueline.
Essentially, defensemen are the rovers of the league.
They participate in the offense and take an active role defensively (that is, initiating the transition play), especially with the movements and tactics to force transition. Upon that initial transition, they change their caps from defensemen to supplementary offense. Rovers are real.
Here’s the Norris front runner, Roman Josi, portraying that skillset.
And this but one of many highlight reel plays by the other Norris candidate, the Avalanche’s Cale Makar.
With all due respect for the elite blueliners across the league, for me the Norris race consists of two players, Makar and Josi. Considering they are both pushing the limits of past defensemen, it’s an easy two player race.
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And tipping my hand, I’d bet that Josi’s importance to the Nashville Predators is more important that the contribution of Makar’s in Colorado. Not to diminish Makar’s contributions, but this is tight race in which a single factor can tip the scale for either player.
Both players offer a different element, with Josi providing a franchise and individual record breaking and eye-opening season threatening to break through the 100 point barrier in all situations. With and additional three points in Tuesday night’s affair, he’s pushing that pace, with just over a dozen games left in the season, he’ll have to go close to a point per game and better to break through that mark. Cale Makar with 24 goals may have a better chance of cracking the 30-goal barrier than Josi has at making up 19 points in 16 remaining games.
He’s not going to catch the leaders in a single season defenseman points race, with the Bobby Orr’s and Raymond Burques and Brian Leetch’s, but should he break through that barrier, he could chase the 103 point mark to enter an all-time top-10 season in scoring by an NHL defensemen.
For this writing, we’ll be using data compiled by three different sources, Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey and MoneyPuck.com, designated where applicable. Data is also taken as a snapshot of Monday April 4, 2022, prior entering games Tuesday night. Both players are wonders on the power play (5v4) but for this piece, the focus will be on 5v5 play.
Entering Tuesday night, Josi had 40 points at 5v5, and Makar was sitting with 37 and they’re both not too far off of recording one of the best seasons post lockout 2013-14 season to present.
Josi collected an additional three points, with one at 5v5, to put him at 41 and only four points back of Brent Burns/Erik Karlsson’s high of 45, Burns in 2016-17, and Karlsson 2015-16 season in Ottawa. At both players pace, they can both surpass Burns best. For Josi, it’s almost an expectation of when he will do it at this point.
In all situations, entering Tuesday’s games with 81 points, Josi’s three point night put him at 84, setting the best single season point totals since Burns put up 83 in 2018-19. Makar is not far behind, with 75 points and could well end up surpassing Burns as well. The remarkable observation of this exercise was to see just how much Burns and Karlsson dominated the blueline scoring in individual seasons.
Of note, the 12.06% individual shooting percentage recorded by Makar is one of the highest among defensemen from ’13-14 to present, with a minimum of 55 games played in a single season.
Player | Season | Team | Sh% |
|---|---|---|---|
14-15 | DAL | 14.16 | |
13-14 | L.A | 13.92 | |
19-20 | FLA | 13.85 | |
16-17 | NYR | 13.1 | |
15-16 | NYR | 13.04 | |
13-14 | COL | 12.87 | |
21-22 | COL | 12.06 |
Game log data compiled from Natural Stat Trick was repurposed for this image below. Each player’s quarterly breakdown in box score points at 5v5 (top charts) along with the IPP (individual points percentage) included. The bottom charts measure individual goals scored measured to individual expected goals, with shooting percentage.
Josi’s fourth quarter surge, improved with a three-point performance in his 8th fourth quarter game, and his production is becoming legendary among blueliners in IPP. Prior to Tuesday, he had contributed a 5v5 point to 52% of on-ice goals scored up fro 41.27% in the third quarter. Makar’s first quarter included seven goals, with five markers the rest of the way. Using the bottom chart, he hit those seven goals with a shooting percentage in the 12% range, and it’s significantly down from then.
Both players have outperformed their expected goals production, with the exception of Makar’s third quarter.
Points seem to favor Josi, while goals favor Makar moving forward with the end of the season in sight.
Josi’s 5v5 production seems more consistent, with a 3rd quarter spike with 17 points almost matching each of the 1st, 2nd and current 4th quarters.
Another interesting note is with the amount of times these two carry the puck into the offensive zone, they are credited with very few rush attempts. In over 1200 minutes each, both players have a combined five rush attempts. The Leafs Morgan Rielly has three, and Hedman has put up 14, bucking the trend. The skillset is to create offense in any way possible, but these players do more than just rush up ice, capitalize on a chance and retreat back to position. They set up and create havoc in the opposition zone – true rovers.
With all the skill available to these players, they can create more than just off the rush. They can maintain control and facilitate the pace in the offensive zone, and are exceptional game breakers.
Follow the video in this thread to see just how the skill of Makar helps him create opportunities with the puck on his stick, using teammates and on his own.
Josi is no slouch and his highlight reel can be just as expansive and seen as a versatile teaching tool for younger players.
In the end, I believe Roman Josi will win the Norris Trophy. But this has been one of the closest and most entertaining duels we’ve seen among NHL blueliners.
