Toronto Maple Leafs: Morgan Rielly Deserves Norris Consideration

The Toronto Maple Leafs are a first place team this year, and one of the reasons for that is Morgan Rielly’s return to excellence.

Two years ago, the Toronto Maple Leafs best defenseman played some of the toughest minutes in hockey, with one of the worst partners possible, and deserved more Norris consideration that he got.  While the award went to Marc Giordano, it easily could have gone to Rielly, and I still think he was robbed.  (20 goal 72 points seasons don’t grow on trees).

Last year was a bit rough, as he played through an injury that sapped his game of much of its power. This year, though, he has bounced back completely.

His reputation is that he’s good offensively and bad defensively, and while that may be somewhat true, it’s also misleading.  Too often in hockey we don’t consider the game holistically, and we divide it into two separate parts when we should look at the overall picture.

Now, sit back and relax as I make the case for Morgan Rielly’s first Norris Trophy.

Toronto Maple Leafs, Morgan Rielly and the Norris Trophy

Morgan Rielly currently leads a first place team in ice time, while posting excellent numbers across the board.  For the first time in his career, he’s playing with a peer for a partner, and it’s really paying off.

With Morgan Rielly on the ice, the Toronto Maple Leafs get 53% of of the scoring chances, 54% of the dangerous chances, and 54% of the expected-goals.  These are excellent numbers.

Only ten other defenseman have played at least 700 minutes, and Rielly has the highest expected goals out of all of them. If we go 650 minutes, he’s 7th, still very, very good.

Expected-Goals are good because they try to eliminate luck from the equation and are better than actual goals at predicting future performance.  However, that doesn’t mean we should ignore the real results, and the real results are excellent when it comes to Rielly – of the 101 defenseman who have played over 650 total minutes, Rielly is 3rd in actual goals-for percentage, just slightly out of first with the Leafs’ goal differential with him in all situations being + 25.

If we take out the power-plays, he drops to tenth, but that is still fantastic. The Leafs get 59% of the total goals when Rielly is on the ice, the same as Tampa gets with Hedman.

Rielly is just 13th in defenseman scoring, but it’s his overall contributions that should garner him Norris consideration.

As you can see from the @jfresh player card, over the last three seasons, Rielly is better than 88% of other NHL defenseman when all statistics are considered. If you look at the top right where it shows the year-by-year WAR, you can see he’s in the 98% range this season.

Rielly doesn’t provide much defense, but he does provide a ton of offense and the net total when you take both into consideration is a player who plays among the toughest minutes in hockey and always comes out on top. (stats that don’t come from the player card come from naturalstattrick.com).

The Athletic writer Dom Luszczyscyn has created a one-number ranking system called Game Score which can be applied after every game. It’s similar to Wins Above Replacement in that it boils down all the stats into one number.

Using this number, Morgan Rielly ranks as the 6th best defenseman this season, behind Adam Fox, Samuel Girard, Devon Toews, Victor Hedman, and Jeff Petry.  There’s still almost half a season to go, and I think with a healthy Matthews and a potentially improved at the trade deadline lineup, that Rielly could rise higher and earn his first career Norris.

To be clear, I am just saying that Rielly deserves Norris consideration at this point – he’s among the best in the NHL, but he isn’t the very best.  Maybe he rises in the second half, but right now Adam Fox should probably be the Norris frontrunner, followed by Cale Makar and Victor Hedman.