NHL awards ballots will be arriving in our inboxes in two weeks’ time, and the biggest question facing voters in 2023 is the same one they were dealing with a year ago. Who should win the Norris Trophy, awarded annually “to the defense player who demonstrates the greatest all-around ability in the position.”
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Instructively, the award doesn’t go to the defenseman who has created the most offense, though creating offence is inarguably an important part of what makes a defenseman effective and noteworthy in the modern NHL. Still, the specific definition of the Norris is that it goes to the defense player with the greatest all-around ability in the position — and the position was originally created to prevent, not produce, goals.
There’s been lots of talk about the need for the league to create a defensive defenseman award, since everything else under the NHL sun is honored. Whenever I’m feeling particularly counterintuitive, I’ll argue you don’t need a best defensive defenseman award because that’s precisely what the Norris seeks to reward — playing defense effectively, in all three zones on the ice.
I do believe defensemen are underappreciated on the whole, and so the NHL could add a second award to honor their play. But logically, it makes greater sense to create a award to honor the best offensive defenseman in the league and name it after either Bobby Orr or Paul Coffey. That way, you have handed the new award to Erik Karlsson of the San Jose Sharks this season and then have a far more nuanced discussion over who should actually win the Norris.
But let’s circle back to the 2022 voting, in which it was nearly impossible to separate the candidacies of two players: the Colorado Avalanche’s Cale Makar and the Nashville Predators’ Roman Josi. Josi led all NHL defensemen in points and had the season of his life in terms of his overall play. Not only did Josi achieve career scoring highs, he also helped a number of his teammates produce the best seasons of their lives as well. He would have been a completely deserving winner.
The problem was, there were two deserving winners, and Makar ultimately prevailed because Makar is that unique player who does almost everything well and nothing badly.
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He is, to use a popular term of this era, a unicorn. I happened to cover Makar’s first-ever NHL game — it was in the playoffs, against his hometown team, the Calgary Flames, in the spring of 2019 after he’d completed his sophomore year at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. From the moment Makar stepped on the ice, first shift, he looked like an NHL defenseman. And that rarely happens. And maybe hasn’t happened since Orr made his NHL debut in 1966. Few would dispute the fact that Makar is the best defenseman in the NHL.
But the award is specific to an 82-game season and, for that reason, Makar will get some competition, from among others, Karlsson, who is producing offensive numbers unlike any we’ve seen in decades.
Just as Connor McDavid is about to become the first forward in 27 years to reach 150 points, Karlsson has a (diminishing) chance to become the first defenseman in 31 years to score 100 points. That’s an outstanding season and, for voters, tends to be a sexy stat.
Karlsson is averaging 1.21 points per game; Makar is second at 1.12 points per game and the only other Norris contender scoring more than a point per game is Quinn Hughes of the Vancouver Canucks.
If we turn our attention first to the offensive side of the equation, Makar is sixth overall in scoring by defenseman (66 points in 59 games), is first in average time on ice (26:26) and the only reason that he isn’t the heavy, heavy favorite to defend is because he’s missed 15 games because of injury.
The Avalanche have eight games remaining. If Makar stays healthy and plays them all, he will get to 67 games played by the end of the season. Sometimes, voters inexplicably overlook a candidate because he’s missed time with injuries, but that shouldn’t be a factor this year, even if the Avalanche decide to rest Makar at some point in the next two weeks just because he’s played so much when he has been healthy. Too much, maybe.
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Anaheim Ducks coach Dallas Eakins had a chance to watch Makar in person this past week.
In a game that ended 5-1 for Colorado, Anaheim was up 1-0 early on a rare breakdown in communication between the Avs’ two best players, Makar and Nathan MacKinnon, which caused a turnover in their own zone and led directly to the first Ducks’ goal. From that moment on, the two of them cranked up their games and dominated, practically on every shift.
MacKinnon made something out of nothing on the Avalanche’s second goal, just before the end of the first period, to give them the lead going into the dressing room — and from there, they cruised home. Makar contributed two assists and was constantly involved in the rush. The one thing about the Avalanche is, even if they’re not firing on all cylinders, even if they’re playing for the second day in a row, they find ways to win the games they’re supposed to win
To Eakins, Makar is on another level.
“For me, he’s the best defenseman in the league,” Eakins said. “Obviously, he’s got a skill set and a mindset that sets him apart. I think being around a Nathan MacKinnon, with the way he goes about his business, and Gabe Landeskog, helps. I don’t know the kid at all, but he looks like the sort of player that will say, ‘I can use this from here, and I can use that from there.’ I think he’s just another guy, like MacKinnon, who is really, really driven. He is so dynamic, and so fun to watch.”
Avs’ power-play alignment
In recent days, the Avalanche have gone back to a power-play alignment that they deployed earlier in the season in which, on their second unit, they are using three defenseman and only two forwards. This is mostly because Artturi Lehkonen is out with a broken finger. The top unit features the best available five-some: MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Valeri Nichushkin, J.T. Compher and, manning the point, Makar.
For the No. 2 unit, the only two forwards are Evan Rodrigues and Matt Nieto, supplemented by three defensemen: Samuel Girard, Bowen Byram and Devon Toews. When the faceoff in the offensive zone is on the left side, Girard usually slides down and lines up in the winger’s spot; when it’s on the right side, it’s Byram.
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Last Monday against Anaheim, that unit produced the team’s only power-play goal of the game, which gave them power-play goals in 12 consecutive games.
Oddly enough, according to Byram, this is not the first time he’s ever been part of a team that deployed three defensemen on a power-play unit. “Actually, one time in junior, in the Canada-Russia Subway series,” he said. “It’s the lead-up to the world juniors. Each league, the WHL, OHL and QMJHL, play two games against the Russian world junior team. The one year there, we had three defenseman on the unit too. So, it’s kind of funny — and it makes it fun sometimes.”
When I asked coach Jared Bednar what inspired that unusual set-up on the power play, he answered: “Lack of personnel at certain times of the year with injuries. … We just feel like we’re putting our best players out there on that unit, in spots that they’re familiar with, regardless of whether they’re forwards or D. We feel those guys have the patience and poise and smarts and ability to make the plays we need them to make. So we’ve kind of stuck with it, because they’ve done a nice job in the limited time that they get.”
Bowen Byram. (Brian Bradshaw Sevald / USA Today)
How do they decide who drops down from the point for the faceoff? According to Byram, “You try different sets off faceoffs to help out the centerman. If the faceoff’s won in tight; you try to scrape it out of there, or maybe just create a little confusion.”
The Avs are playing without injured defenseman Josh Manson at the moment — the hope is he gets back playing before the playoffs start — but even so, they are still a formidable group one-to-six on the blue line: Makar and Toews; Byram and Girard; and, on the third pair, Erik and Jack Johnson.
Johnson has been a useful addition. He was a valuable insurance policy on last year’s Stanley Cup-winning team and then reacquired at the deadline from Chicago to act as that again this season. He would be the odd man out if Manson can return.
Byram had that exceptional playoff run a year ago and looks as if he’s hitting his stride again — good news as the Avalanche plot their Cup defense. He missed a big chunk of the first half of the season — 38 games in all — but in the 36 games he’s played, he’s scored 10 goals.
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Five of them have come in the last 10 games.
People always talk about playoff X-factors. For me, watching Byram play now — and remembering how effective he was in last year’s playoffs, which were really a coming out party for him — he could be the Avalanche’s X-factor. They have played the entire season without three of the top six forwards from last year’s team — Landeskog (recovering from injury) and Nazem Kadri and Andre Burakowsky, who priced themselves off the team, because of salary-cap considerations — but the Avalanche blue line is deep and stacked. Even now, without Manson, they look formidable.
Not a single one of the Avs’ top-six defensemen has played every game. In addition to Byram’s 38-game absence, Toews has missed two; Girard six; Makar 15; Erik Johnson 19 and Manson 47.
How does Byram feel? Better, every day he says.
“Obviously, some injury troubles, but I’ve been feeling really good since I’ve been back,” he said. “Yeah, we’re obviously all excited for the playoffs to get going, but we’ve got nine games left now so, we’ve got to keep building, so we’re at our best in the playoffs.”
For his part, Bednar likes what Byram brings to the mix — a player who, at his best, as he was against the Ducks, is “physical and quick in defending, with great anticipation and jump to get up in the play.”
The race for first place
The Avs’ hopes of catching Minnesota for first place in the ultra-competitive Central Division took a hit on Wednesday, when they lost 4-2 to the surging Wild, a game in which Bednar expressed some disappointment in the play of some of the team’s supporting cast.
But two days before that, when he was asked about the goal of finishing first, Bednar acknowledged that was important, but not the overriding goal.
“More important for me is the habits and details we’ve been playing with at this time of year,” he said. “We’ve been tightening those areas up for quite some time here and as the season goes on, you want to make sure your game is in order going into the playoffs. But certainly, in the race we’re in now, it’s a race we want to win. We’ve talked about it recently and we’ll continue to talk about it until the end of the season. I think it’s added motivation to our team to play the way we want to play.”
Saturday’s date with the Dallas Stars is shaping up as another critical test. The teams are tied in points (94) and in games played (74). Both are three points behind Minnesota, with a game in hand.
Injury watch
The calendar turns over to April on Saturday, which leaves 13 days in the regular season for most teams. Officially, the season was supposed to end on a Thursday night, and the playoffs to start the following Monday. The latter is still true. But there are two make-up games to be played on Friday, April 14: Colorado at Nashville, and Buffalo at Columbus.
If the Predators stay in the wild-card race, that game could be significant for Nashville. If Landeskog is at all close to being ready to play, that might be an opportunity for the Avalanche to slide him into a single game before the playoffs start. Same for Manson. Ideally, you don’t want to go into playoffs completely cold.
But for teams at the other end of the spectrum, there isn’t a lot left to play for. And yet, at least two players who’ve been hurt are trying to get back anyway: Adam Henrique in Anaheim and Sean Couturier in Philadelphia.
Henrique told the Orange County Register this week that his motivation was simply to get a few games under his belt, because he didn’t want to go the whole summer without having his skates touch the ice at the end of the year.
Couturier has an even greater motivation. If he doesn’t get into the lineup for at least a handful of games, then it’ll be almost two full seasons without an NHL game.
For the casual fan, it might be easy to lose sight of Couturier, but as recently as 2019, he won the Selke Trophy as the best defensive forward in the NHL. In August of 2021, the Flyers signed him to an expensive long-term contract extension (eight years, $62.5 million). He’s played 29 NHL games since then. Neither Couturier nor Cam Atkinson played at all this year. Healthy, both would be in the Flyers’ top six.
Assuming both do come back and can play at some version of their former selves, with the way a handful of the younger Flyers forwards have developed this year (Noah Cates, Owen Tippett and Morgan Frost of late), that’s not a bad young nucleus up front. A healthy Couturier might make it easier to trade Kevin Hayes, who was the subject of some rumors around the deadline, but ultimately, it was a difficult contract to move.
I still see a scenario in which Hayes is potentially reunited with former college teammate Johnny Gaudreau in Columbus, which has the makings of a win-now line. And then if the Blue Jackets happen to land Connor Bedard in the draft lottery, and pair him with Patrik Laine on a second, separate line, then some of the optimism they were feeling in Columbus last summer just might return again this summer.
The 30-year-old Couturier explained his thinking in trying to come back, even though the season is well and truly lost, to our Charlie O’Connor here.
The main takeaway: “I’m not getting any younger. I want to get a feel for the game and know going into the summer what I have to do to be back at the level I need to be.”
But probably more importantly, from Couturier’s point of view is, “just feeling good about yourself, that you’re back to being a hockey player and not rehabbing. I’ve done that enough in the last year and a half.”
(Top photo of Cale Makar: Brian Bradshaw Sevald / USA Today)