Everything Wrong with the Norris Trophy Embodied in Early Victor Hedman Buzz

The Tampa Bay Lighnting announced on Monday that Victor Hedman is going to miss four to six weeks after requiring surgery for a broken finger.

It’s a massive blow to the team, which loses an exceptional defenceman, and it will also severely damage the player’s chances of contending for the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s best defenceman.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

That last item figured prominently in reports on the injury.

USA Today’s Jimmy Hascup mentioned Hedman as “a Norris Trophy candidate” and said that the improvements in the player’s game are one of the reasons the Lightning are expected to be contenders in the East. The Sporting News’ Sean Gentille lamented that Hedman’s Norris chances were probably already dead, despite his “progression over the last year or two.”

Bleacher Report’s own Timothy Rapp didn’t mention the award but did say that Hedman was “finally becoming the superstar the Lightning envisioned when they selected him No. 2 overall in the 2009 draft.”  

It’s a pretty good example of everything that’s wrong with the Norris Trophy, and by larger extension the things that are wrong with the way we evaluate defencemen.

For starters, Hedman’s role in the Lightning lineup has actually been reduced in the early part of 2014-15. It’s the fourth consecutive year in which his time on ice has dropped at even strength, on the penalty kill and overall:

Season	EVTOI	PKTOI	PPTOI	Total TOI
2011-12	19:02	2:54	1:08	23:05
2012-13	18:19	2:36	1:44	22:39
2013-14	17:47	2:09	2:29	22:26
2014-15	13:54	1:49	4:09	19:53

That even-strength number in particular is quite low. Eight defencemen have played at least one game for the Lightning this season, and Hedman ranks dead last among them in even-strength ice time.

None of this means that people are wrong to say that Hedman is an elite defenceman. He is. The Lightning are a far better team when he’s on the ice. Last year, he had the best relative Corsi number on the club’s blue line by a mile and led the entire NHL in points per hour (Bissonnette and Burns played forward) by a defenceman at even strength.

Hedman’s an elite player, and he has been for some time. It just hasn’t been noticed because he plays in a tiny market and didn’t have super-shiny point totals.

The difference now is that he’s getting power-play time.

Elise Amendola/Associated Press

Raw Charge’s Kyle Alexander wrote a great piece on this subject just days before Hedman was injured in action against the Vancouver Canucks.

Alexander does strong work breaking down Hedman’s complete game but correctly identifies the moment that the Swedish defenceman went from good defenceman whom nobody cared about to Norris Trophy candidate. That moment? The Steven Stamkos injury:

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In the first game following Steven Stamkos breaking his leg, Hedman logged 5:06 on the power play, as the unit had to shift away from setting up faceoff circle one-timers and towards more backdoor/slot plays and point shots. Hedman took his new role and never gave it back, even after Stamkos returned from injury, and he's manning that top spot on Tampa Bay's power play this year, too. He logged over 4 minutes of power play time 13 times following the Stamkos injury as he became a fixture on the blue line for Tampa Bay's top man advantage unit.

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Prior to that injury in 2013-14, Hedman had not cracked even 40 seconds per game on the man advantage. Since then, he’s been a mainstay, and it’s had a massive impact. Five of his seven points so far this year have come on the power play.

Being a massive success on the power play shouldn’t be a prerequisite for acknowledgement as a great defenceman, but it is.

Here’s the list of Norris Trophy winners going back to 1997-98 (which is as far as the NHL’s stats page goes):

Year	Player	PP Points
2013-14	Duncan Keith	21
2012-13	P.K. Subban	26
2011-12	Erik Karlsson	28
2010-11	Nicklas Lidstrom	39
2009-10	Duncan Keith	16
2008-09	Zdeno Chara	28
2007-08	Nicklas Lidstrom	34
2006-07	Nicklas Lidstrom	33
2005-06	Nicklas Lidstrom	50
2003-04	Scott Niedermayer	25
2002-03	Nicklas Lidstrom	30
2001-02	Nicklas Lidstrom	30
2000-01	Nicklas Lidstrom	43
1999-00	Chris Pronger	26
1998-99	Al MacInnis	37
1997-98	Rob Blake	22

Hedman’s career high in power play-points is 14, set last year. No defenceman in this span won with a total that low. Only one has won with a total under 20 points—Duncan Keith, who gets a strong push in offensive situations from the coaching staff in Chicago.

Want to be recognized as a great defenceman? Get a push on the power play and make the most of it.

Points do a bad job of summing up a defenceman’s game. However, voters for the Norris Trophy, and the hockey-watching community at large, continue to act as though playing minutes on a team’s No. 1 power-play unit is a prerequisite for being acknowledged as a No. 1 defenceman.

It’s unfortunate. In Hedman’s case, if it weren’t for a horrific injury to Stamkos, the hockey world might still be massively undervaluing him.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work. Statistics via BehindtheNet.ca.