Risers and fallers in the race for the 2024 Norris Trophy
In 2022-2023, Erik Karlsson turned back the clock to post career highs in goals (25), assists, and points (101), becoming the first triple-digit defenseman since 1992 (Brian Leetch) along the way. The Swede validated an otherwise lackluster stint in Northern California, leaving the San Jose Sharks on a historic high note.
The prolific season was enough to win ‘EK65’ his third Norris Trophy as the top defenseman in the league, but should it have been? Karlsson struggled with the whole defense part of being a defenseman, and the Sharks struggled with everything else; they never showed a pulse and finished with the fourth-worst record in the NHL.
Top dog Cale Makar missed 22 games (he finished third all the same), and voters fell back on the claim that they could not agree on an obvious alternative to Karlsson’s eye-popping offense. Only 2021 winner Adam Fox came close to challenging the future Hall-of-Famer, as Josh Morrissey and Hampus Lindholm, names that do not typically pop up for individual honors, rounded out the top five.
Next season, there probably won’t be another 100-point scorer to muddy up the proceedings, and with so many up-and-coming stars on the blueline, there will be ample contenders for the Norris Trophy compared to 2023’s dull field. Who will take the next step, and which players have missed their best shot at the award?
Risers
Barring anything unforeseen, Cale Makar will find himself in the ‘risers’ tier following any season that does not end with the Norris Trophy in his hands. The title of top defenseman in the league has not been this clear since Nicklas Lidstrom’s heyday, and while ‘The Perfect Human’ was something of a late bloomer, Makar is already in a class of his own at just 24.
Plaudits aside, Makar’s play did not fall off significantly from the 2021-2022 campaign that saw him collect Norris, Conn Smythe, and Stanley Cup honors. It just came in a smaller sample. The Albertan missed significant time from a pair of concussions, and Colorado Avalanche fans will understandably worry about the generational star’s durability.
When Makar was on the ice, though, it was business as usual. Alongside Devon Toews on the league’s best top pair, the former Calder Trophy winner cleared the point-per-game mark for the second-consecutive season, notching 17 goals and 66 points in 60 games. Makar’s season was not as long as any hockey fan would have liked and ended ignominiously at the hands of the upstart Seattle Kraken in a series that saw him suspended for a late hit. Still, there is no question that he will be back on the awards podium before long. Only Connor McDavid and Makar’s teammate Nathan MacKinnon inspire similar fear during zone entries.
While Makar finished third in Norris voting despite his ailments, voters hardly noticed other dominant, healthy players. Miro Heiskanen was especially hard done by, finishing seventh despite excelling in all the functions required of a top D-man. The hockey world may have told him to wait his turn for recognition while awarding veterans for mid-to-late career surges, but that turn will come sooner rather than later all the same.
Heiskanen made Dallas Stars GM Jim Nill look like a genius for locking him into an eight-year, $8.45 million AAV contract in the summer of 2021. Heiskanen had already gotten Norris votes before inking his contract, but his 2022-2023 campaign made the $67.5 million commitment look like a bargain. The Finn’s 25:29 minutes a night were sixth in the NHL, while his 73 points tied for fifth-most among defensemen.
Heiskanen’s Stars sat atop the Central Division for most of the season before a late-season Avalanche hot streak displaced them, and the defenseman’s efforts were essential to the team’s 10-point improvement. No Star controlled more chances (54.88%) or expected goals (53.88%) than Heiskanen, who coach Pete DeBoer thinks already should be fighting for the title of best in the league. “He gets the toughest assignments every night shutting down the best players on the other team, killing penalties, on with a disadvantage 5-on-6 late in games, blocking shots,” DeBoer told NHL.com. “Miro checks boxes in all those areas.”
Lucky for Dallas fans, Heiskanen’s 2022-2023 emergence could only be the beginning. Jake Oettinger, Jason Robertson, and Roope Hintz are only getting better, and with Jamie Benn and Joe Pavelski still producing late into their careers, the Stars are loaded for bear ahead of the 2023-2024 campaign. Heiskanen’s reputation grew by leaps and bounds as the Stars powered through to the Western Conference Final Series, and he is more visible than ever as Dallas embarks on a promising upcoming season.
Rasmus Dahlin tied Heiskanen in points last season and has him beaten in the physical aspects of the game. At his best, Dahlin is the more dynamic player, but his Buffalo Sabres are not exactly a sure thing as the season approaches. As a result, neither is Dahlin. Even if they backslide, the rapidly improving Swede should improve on last season’s eighth-place finish now that he has announced himself as a legitimate top-pair guy.
If voters decide to revert to an ultra-conservative approach after Karlsson’s controversial victory, why shouldn’t Jaccob Slavin get the nod? He is not exactly a dynamo on offense, but he will again anchor one of the NHL’s best defenses in Carolina as the Hurricanes’ top option. When it comes to stopping the bad guys from scoring, few can hang with Slavin. Isn’t that the point of defense?
No Movement
While Adam Fox has not quite reached Brad Park levels of unfortunate timing (he already has a Norris of his own), it is hard not to view him as Makar’s B-side. Fox won the most coveted award at his position as a 22-year-old, and at 25, his window to repeat should be wide open. Failing to do so last year in a relatively thin field was not great for his chances, though.
Fox’s playmaking (60A in 82GP) and skating speak for themselves, and, despite his lack of physicality, his penchant for clogging up lanes makes him one of the best two-way defensemen in the league; no one in the top seven of last year’s vote blocked more shots than the Harvard alum’s 125. With his New York Rangers stuck in neutral, though, Fox may be too well-rounded for his own good.
Karlsson is more dangerous on the power play. Makar is more dynamic. Dahlin is tougher. Fox is a tremendous player who will never fall out of relevance in the New York market, but an inability to dominate any one niche could be his undoing where personal hardware is concerned. Close but no cigar may become a theme for last season’s runner-up.
While Fox has a Norris to fall back on no matter how badly he is frustrated in years to come, poor Charlie McAvoy might feel that his best chance at the trophy has already come and gone. McAvoy is only 25 and one of the NHL’s best defenders, but his game has never had the flash it seems to take to gain clout with the modern hockey media. Even though only newly retired Bruins teammate Patrice Bergeron has a better rating than McAvoy’s +140 since the latter came into the league, the former BU Terrier has never finished higher than fourth in Norris voting.
It seemed that could change last season when McAvoy set a career-high in points per game (.776) and garnered a higher share of chances (53.57%) than anyone on Boston’s defense. Instead, he was more disrespected than ever. McAvoy led the team in blocked shots (131) and scoring by a defenseman (52P) but lost 15 games to injury as shiny new teammate Hampus Lindholm led the league in rating with a +49. Lindholm’s fourth-place finish shattered McAvoy’s base with the Boston media as he fell out of the top 15.
McAvoy is a crunching hitter, brave on-ice leader, and true all-situations defenseman. Without Bergeron, Orlov, or Connor Clifton, the ‘Bs’ will rely on him next season more than ever. That will keep McAvoy in the public eye, but with Boston in line for a steep decline, it is unlikely voters will suddenly gain a new appreciation for a player they have often overlooked.
Like McAvoy, former Bruin Dougie Hamilton is an elite player who has never gotten to the Norris Trophy podium. Unlike McAvoy, he has easily identifiable deficiencies holding him back. The big redhead is an offensive monster who scored an absurd 22 goals last season for a New Jersey Devils team on the rise, but he needs Jonas Siegenthaler to babysit him on defense. Fox and Heiskanen do not have that problem, so Hamilton stays put as a top-10 finisher with no real chance of cracking the top three.
Fallers
Pittsburgh Penguins GM Kyle Dubas can call his offseason a success no matter what happens during the next 10 months. He made his team younger and cheaper by trading for a 33-year-old with the fifth-highest salary in the league. Huh? Daily Faceoff’s Mike McKenna broke down the particulars, but the bottom line is that Dubas hooked up an AED to the last vestiges of Mike Sullivan’s back-to-back Cup winners.
The favorable change of scenery does not help Karlsson’s chances of a fourth Norris. What he did last season was incredible, but everything about the player and his stats screams regression. Karlsson will not have the iron grip on the power play he did in San Jose on a team featuring veritable doppelganger Kris Letang. Karlsson probably will not play 25 minutes a game again if Sullivan means to save his legs for a playoff push. He definitely will not score 12% of shots from the blueline again. That mark would be respectable for a top-six winger, let alone a defenseman.
Karlsson is still an explosive offensive contributor who could score 35 points fewer than last season’s output and have a strong year for the Pens. His shoddy defense will reflect far more negatively on his reputation for a playoff contender than it did for the lowly Sharks, though, and voters can choose from plenty of great scorers who get time on the penalty kill.
While Karlsson’s raw numbers will take a hit in Pittsburgh because there are more mouths to feed, Roman Josi will again be the Nashville Predators’ primary driving force on offense. The Nashville captain has led the team in scoring for four straight seasons from the blueline after chipping in with 18 goals and 59 points over 67 games last season.
While it is impressive for Josi to maintain that level of dominance, it is not a sustainable plan from an organizational perspective to pin that much responsibility on one player whose primary focus is keeping pucks out at the other end. That much was apparent last season when the Preds tied the Philadelphia Flyers as the league’s fourth-worst attack.
New GM Barry Trotz decided the solution to that issue was to ship out his two most dangerous centers in Matt Duchene and Ryan Johansen, and, for the umpteenth time, Nashville will rely on Josi, now 33, Juuse Saros, and a prayer. That is not fair to the Swiss superstar, who will suffer from his consistent overuse sooner rather than later.
Hampus Lindholm’s out-of-the-blue fourth-place finish will be tough to replicate on a Bruins team that has suffered considerably this offseason. The former Duck was incredible last season, but last year’s voters cast their ballots for Boston’s historic season more so than Lindholm himself. As for second runner-up Josh Morrissey, a +3 rating during a 76-point season for a playoff team is not exactly an endorsement of the 28-year-old’s two-way game. Offensive production alone is a tired parameter for awarding the Norris, and from Dahlin to Heiskanen, the next generation of defensive superstars can get it done at both ends of the ice.
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