Toronto Maple Leafs: Morgan Rielly and Other Norris Candidates
The Toronto Maple Leafs are having a stellar regular season.
The Toronto Maple Leafs currently sit in fifth place in the NHL standings, and are still a relatively young, up and coming team. Both teams they are competing against for the title of Best in the NHL – Tampa and Boston – are experienced teams who’ve won or played for Cups, and who have been building around the same core for a decade.
Sure, it’d be nice for the Toronto Maple Leafs to beat them, but let’s not lose site of the fact that those are two teams we hope the Leafs can become.
Tampa build around Stamkos and Hedman, and Boston around Bergeron and Chara. If the Leafs can get anything similar after ten years of Matthews and Rielly, I think we’ll all be pretty damn satisfied.
And speaking of Tampa, they’ve got the Hart Trophy all but locked up with Nikita Kucherov and his insane season. As easily as we throw around labels like “Generational” talent, it’s crazy that Nikita Kucherov has become the best player in the NHL. If only the Leafs weren’t so keen on Stuart Percey back in 2011, he could be scoring goals for them today.
Just kidding, the draft is a crapshoot. Percey could have just as easily been a Norris Trophy winner as Kucherov a Hart Trophy winner. What can you do?
With the Hart locked up, Let’s talk about the Norris Trophy. Here is a list of your possible Norris Trophy Candidates.
Brent Burns
Burns has an incredible 73 points in 70 games, and is likely to set a career high this season. He is awesome.
Burns has a 56.57% possession rating, which is + 9% relative to his team. The Sharks have an insane 155 more shots for when Burns is on the ice than against.
If not for the fact that his team’s goalies are under .900 save % when he’s on the ice, he’d probably look even better. He’s a +17 regardless, but let’s say his goalie was putting up the .930% that Ron Hainsey is getting. That is why you should never trust this stat. If you did, you might think that Hainsey is somehow better defensively than Burns. He’s not. (Stats naturalhattrick.com)
The weirdest thing about Brent Burns is that he’s 35 and instead of declining, he just keeps getting better. He’s already got one Norris Trophy and there’s a really big chance that he gets a second one this year.
Erik Karlsson
Full disclosure: There is no chance that Erik Karlsson wins his third (or what should probably be his seventh) Norris Trophy this year.
If he did, he’d deserve it. He is – full stop- the best defenseman in the NHL. As the kids say “it’s not even close.” Erik Karlsson is probably the only player you could legitimately argue is on the level of Connor McDavid – that’s how good he is.
Unfortunately he is hurt, has only played in 52 games and won’t likely be back until near the playoffs.
Karlsson almost has a 60% percent possession rating, which is even higher relative to his team than Burns’ (obviously).
His 45 points in 52 games might not seem as good as Burns’ but they’re even better. Karlsson’s on-ice shooting percentage is a full percentage point lower than Burns’ and his on-ice save percentage is just about 89%.
If pucks went in when he was on the ice like they should, and if his goalie played even half way competently, he would have more points than Burns does.
You can’t really say too much more other than he’s been a bit unlucky, otherwise he’d be leading the league in scoring again and adding a Norris to his Trophy case along with his uncontested Best Hair award.
Mark Giordano
So, so old, and so so bald! It matters not for the Calgary Flames best defenseman. Like Brent Burns, Giordano keeps getting better with age, and watching him, you’d never know he was 35.
(Side note: It’s weird how 35 is so young in real life, but so old in hockey).
Giordano is already ten points beyond his career high, and he’s got 66 points in 69 games. This puts him third among defensemen in the NHL.
He is also third in the far more important 5v5 scoring.
Giordano is rocking a 57% Corsi-For rating, and he’s been the best player on one of the best teams all year. I don’t think he should win the Norris (I’m sure you can guess my pick) but he definitely should be a top-three candidate.
Kris Letang
Kris Letang has never won a Norris Trophy, which is almost hard to believe.
That is kind of unfair, as Kris Letang has been one of the best defenseman in the NHL for at least ten years. And he’s done it on the best team.
Drafted in the third round of the 2005 draft, Letang is a career Pittsburgh Penguin who has won three Stanley Cups. Despite coming back from several career threatening injuries/health problems, he’s remained an elite player.
He’s also one of the best players in the entire league to watch, and, alone, is worth the price of admission.
I don’t think he should win this year’s award, but if he did win it (legacy style) I wouldn’t be too upset – certainly he’s had a lot of bad injury and health problems, which is the only reason he’s never won it before.
Letang is having a great season with 53 points in 60 games, which means he’s missed 12 games. That might be enough to prevent him from winning yet again.
He’s sixth in 5v5 scoring for a defenseman, and has a 55% CF.
Letang is a great candidate, but he likely won’t win it again this year.
Victor Hedman
Victor Hedman is the reining Norris Trophy Winner.
He is the best defenseman on the League’s best team, which means he is the guy to beat for the Norris this year.
Hedman is 13th in defensemenn scoring with 45 points.
Hedman is 55th in defensemen scoring at 5v5. To be honest, he wouldn’t even be a candidate if it wasn’t for his reputation and the fact he won last year.
But, he is the best defenseman on the NHL’s beset team, and so he does deserve some acknowledgement. It’s not like he’s having a bad season, it’s just that at least five or six other guys are having better ones.
Hedman is far off his 5v5 scoring pace from last years, and his overall totals are padded by Power-Play stats. He’s good. Just not Norris Trophy good (this year).
He obviously remains one of the best in the league, but barring a complete breakdown by the voters, he wont’ be nominated this year.
The Other Candidates
The Main candidates for the Norris this year are pretty obvious: The Toronto Maple Leafs Morgan Rielly, the Flames’ Mark Giordano and the San Jose Sharks’ Brent Burns.
As we have seen, Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang and Victor Hedman also deserve to be mentioned at the top of the league. But who else?
There are several players, who I will currently list, that, while not true Norris Candidates, do deserve to have their amazing seasons acknowledged.
Thomas Chabot is one. The 18th pick of the 2015 draft had the unenviable task of filling in the for Erik Karlson, and he miraculously lived up to what should have been an unattainable standard.
No one on the league’s worst team is ever winning a Norris, but Chabot’s 49 points in 62 games so far are extremely impressive.
Roman Josi, John Carlson, Jared Spurgeon, Keith Yandle and Seth Jones all also deserve mention for their outstanding seasons so far. John Klingberg is another one, and I’m sure I am even missing a couple.
That said, not of these guys is going to win.
Recent Winners
The Norris Trophy doesn’t always go to the best defenseman, for a couple of reasons.
The award is voted on by the Professional Hockey Writers Association, and often they give it to the player based on reputation or point totals. As advanced stats have come into vogue, the voting hasn’t really reflected this, often making some bad choices.
That said, they usually get it pretty close to right, and it’s subjective anyways.
The most recent winner was Victor Hedman.
Going backwards from there over the last ten years: Burns, Doughty, Karlsson, Duncan Keith, Subban, Karlsson, Nick Lidstrom, Keith, Zdeno Chara.
It’s kind of crazy that Doughty only has one. It’s even crazier that Karlsson only has one. The Subban one stands out as the worst pick, not only because there were better choices that year, but because ultimately that led to him leaving the Canadiens, which continues to really suck.
Regardless, it’s a half-decent list and this year should see another first time winner. Potentially a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs?
Morgan Rielly
Toronto Maple Leafs Superstar defenseman Morgan Rielly is having an incredible year.
He has 67 points in 71 games, which is only six points behind Brent Burns, who has played nearly 200 more minutes.
The two players are tied with the exact same rate of 2.47 points per 60 (all-strengths).
Morgan Rielly leads the NHL in 5v5 points for a defenseman, in total, and on a points per minute basis. It is one of the best seasons by a player in Toronto Maple Leafs history.
Rielly, who should have been nominated last year after being one of only three defensemen to score 50 points and put up positive possession numbers while facing top-competition (along with two of the three nominees in Doughty and Hedman) is a clear choice to win this year.
Not only does he lead in goals, 5v5 goals, 5v5 points and is second in total points, but he also has, by far, the worst partner of any other top defensemen in the NHL.
What Rielly has done is made only more impressive by the fact that he’s dragging a 37 year old Ron Hainsey around the ice with him.
Rielly has “only” put up a 51% possession rating this year, but in the 400 minutes he’s avoided playing with Hainsey at 5v5, he goes fro a 49% player (with Hainsey) to a 56% player (with anyone else).
It’s clear and indisputable from the WOWY stats that Ron Hainsey drags Rielly down, and in spite of this, he’s still put up some of the best numbers in the NHL.
Take into account that the Leafs power-play has been snake-bitten by a low shooting percentage and imagine what his numbers would be like under optimal conditions.
Next. Leafs Russia Prospect Update. dark
Morgan Rielly should win the 2019 Norris Trophy, and the vote should be unanimous. I think we can all agree that the best defenseman in the NHL remains Erik Karlsson, who is arguably the third best defenseman of all-time, after Bobby Orr and Nick Lidstrom, but a very good case can be made for Rielly as the #2 Dman in the NHL.
Once again, all stats for this article were from Naturalstattrick.com
Morgan Rielly of the Toronto Maple Leafs should win the Norris Trophy.