A lot of folks thought the battle for the Norris Trophy was going to come down to a tight battle between Chicago’s Duncan Keith and Los Angeles’ Drew Doughty. While they were half-right about that, it was Washington’s Mike Green who made the vote interesting. That said, it was still Duncan Keith who came away with the hardware and his first Norris Trophy as the league’s best defenseman.
As for that voting breakdown, I’m sure folks won’t be asking a lot of questions about this. Duncan Keith was a pretty convincing winner taking down 76 first place votes, the debate will rage on about voters rather overwhelmingly choosing Green over Doughty.
Pts. 1st-2nd-3rd-4th-5th
1. Duncan Keith, CHI 1096 (76-37-14-2-1)
2. Mike Green, WSH 831 (34-46-23-15-9)
3. Drew Doughty, L.A. 662 (15-28-46-25-11)
4. Nicklas Lidstrom, DET 303 (4-9-16-28-36)
5. Chris Pronger, PHI 168 (2-3-9-22-16)
6. Dan Boyle, S.J. 116 (1-2-5-15-22)
7. Shea Weber, NSH 96 (1-2-6-12-6)
8. Zdeno Chara, BOS 88 (0-3-7-6-14)
9. Christian Ehrhoff, VAN 21 (0-1-0-3-5)
10. Mark Streit, NYI 15 (0-1-1-1-0)
11. Ryan Suter, NSH 13 (0-0-2-1-0)
12. Brian Rafalski, DET 12 (0-0-2-0-2)
13. Brent Seabrook, CHI 10 (0-0-2-0-0)
14. Sergei Gonchar, PIT 8 (0-1-0-0-1)
15. Tyler Myers, BUF 6 (0-0-0-0-6)
16. Dion Phaneuf, TOR 3 (0-0-0-1-0)
Jeff Schultz, WSH 3 (0-0-0-1-0)
18. Ed Jovanovski, PHX 1 (0-0-0-0-1)
Chris Phillips, OTT 1 (0-0-0-0-1)
Anton Volchenkov, OTT 1 (0-0-0-0-1)
Obviously, a lot of people believe that Mike Green isn’t so much a defenseman as he is a forward that just happens to play the blue line, but his “defensive” numbers this year in having a +/- rating of +39 as well as his point totals may have done a lot to sway voters opinions of him. Green is outstanding at what he does, it’s just often difficult to to associate “defense” with a player who often gets exposed for not being very good at playing it.
On the upside for those gnashing their teeth over this, the battle between Doughty and Keith for this award on an annual basis should be outstanding for all of us who appreciate great two-way work on the blue line. These two players will be duking it out for this award for the next ten years at least.