{"id":557990,"date":"2026-03-24T18:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T18:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/557990\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T18:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T18:09:09","slug":"why-norris-trophy-race-is-as-tight-as-its-ever-been","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/557990\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Norris Trophy race is as tight as it\u2019s ever been"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we last checked in on the Norris Trophy race, we had a clear leader in Colorado Avalanche defenceman Cale Makar<\/a>. He set the pace, but since that point, some of his peers have caught up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of the NHL\u2019s major individual awards this year, the honour of being named the NHL\u2019s best defenceman might just hold the most intrigue based on not only how tight the race is this deep into the season, but just how strong a field it is. In an era of special blue-liners, this truly is a special season. It\u2019s hard to recall a year in which this many top defencemen have been this great, this consistent, this productive\u2026 all at the same time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fact the Calder Memorial Trophy was won by a defenceman last year in Lane Hutson<\/a> \u2014 now a Norris contender \u2014 and is once again fixed on the blue line as defenceman Matthew Schaefer tightens his grip on the top rookie award shows us this chapter of game-changing defencemen is here to stay.<\/p>\n

Checking in on the Norris race as we enter the final stretch of the season helps us appreciate the great performances we\u2019re seeing and put it all into perspective.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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With that in mind, here\u2019s a look at the top names \u2014\u00a0and there are many\u00a0\u2014 in the hunt for the Norris Trophy right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There might just be a new leading man in the Norris Trophy race. Zach Werenski finished as runner-up for the award last year behind Makar, and this season looks hell-bent on finally earning the honour for himself. The bigger story, and the bigger goal for Werenski and Columbus, is of course how the star rearguard is propelling the Blue Jackets from league basement to playoff position in the span of two months, but he\u2019s more than worthy of the hardware for his efforts. The hiring of Rick Bowness in mid-January has injected an energy and an identity into this lineup that goes beyond the new-coach-bump phenomenon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One season after registering his first 80-point campaign (he had 82 points in 81 games last year), Werenski is five points shy of hitting the milestone again with career-highs across the board. He currently leads all defencemen in scoring pace (1.19 points per game) and sits second behind only Evan Bouchard<\/a> in total points right now. He\u2019s also second in ice time per game, skating an average of 26:23 (only Quinn Hughes<\/a> logs more). He is the biggest driver of the Blue Jackets\u2019 surging success, both offensively \u2014 he leads the team in assists (55) and points (75) by a mile \u2014 and defensively, too. All that adds to him not just being a deserving front-runner for the Norris but worthy of some Hart Trophy chatter, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cale Makar, Colorado Avalanche<\/p>\n

The defending Norris Trophy winner has won the award twice now (he also earned the honour in 2021-22) and for most of this season, he\u2019s been the clear front-runner for a third. But a (relative) slowdown in his production, combined with a serious surge by some of his peers, brings plenty of intrigue to this award race.<\/p>\n

The first half of the campaign saw Makar lead all defencemen in assists (35 \u2014 tied with Lane Hutson), points (47), and plus-minus rating (plus-32) while producing offence at a rate of 1.15 points per game (second behind Werenski). In 28 games since that mid-season point, his production has fallen to a rate of 0.82 points per game, with eight goals and 15 points in 28 games in the second half of the season. A pair of four-game point streaks since the Olympic break have him getting back to his previous pace, and have added some excitement, too \u2014 because there\u2019s history on the line.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With 498 career NHL points to his name, he\u2019s just two shy of hitting 500 and if he can hit the mark Tuesday night against Pittsburgh, he\u2019ll tie the great Denis Potvin as the third fastest defenceman in NHL history to get there. Potvin scored his 500th\u00a0career point in career game No. 465, trailing only Bobby Orr (he needed just 396 games to get to 500 points) and Paul Coffey (422) for fewest games to reach the milestone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Quinn Hughes, Minnesota Wild<\/p>\n

The Wild knew exactly who they were getting when they sent a haul to Vancouver in exchange for Quinn Hughes, and the defender has more than lived up to the billing. The 2023-24 Norris Trophy winner (and 2024-25 finalist) has been Minnesota\u2019s best setup man since landing with the wild on Dec. 14 \u2014 his 42 assists in 39 games since then is tops on the team, and it\u2019s not particularly close. The only teammate with a better points-per-game average since that date is Kirill Kaprizov, with 1.24 compared to Hughes\u2019 1.18.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hughes has registered 12 multi-point games with the Wild \u2014 already tying a franchise record among defencemen \u2014 and has been held off the score sheet just 11 times in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

His 63 assists in 65 games this season (including with the Canucks) has him fourth in the category league-wide regardless of position, while his marathon minutes (27:44 per game) this year has him logging nearly 90 seconds more than the next-busiest skater. Truly, a dominant defenceman worthy of adding another piece of hardware to his trophy cabinet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Evan Bouchard, Edmonton Oilers<\/p>\n

No defenceman has scored more goals or tallied more points since the calendar flipped to 2026 than Evan Bouchard. In fact, his stat line in that time \u2014 42 points in 30 games, including 12 goals (three of which served as game-winners) \u2014 ranks him fifth in scoring across the NHL regardless of position since Jan. 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His offensive outburst has already seen him surpass his previous goal-scoring high, and he\u2019s just two points shy of posting his best-ever points total, too. On top of that, he\u2019s reined in his penchant for untimely turnovers, proving his status as a reliable top-pairing rearguard is about more than his offensive contributions. His nearly 25 minutes of ice time per game is good for 10th\u00a0league-wide. The trust is there, and he\u2019s rewarding it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lane Hutson, Montreal Canadiens<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s Calder Trophy winner as the NHL\u2019s top rookie isn\u2019t the front-runner for the honour of being named this year\u2019s best defenceman, but it\u2019s certainly within reach. The veteran-like play of Montreal\u2019s blue liner has shone through from the start as he\u2019s proven himself to be a key pillar of the Canadiens\u2019 young core.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hutson\u2019s average ice time doesn\u2019t jump off the page compared to his peers on this list, but his offensive contributions do. The 22-year-old\u2019s 58 assists on the season are third best among all defenders and his 69 points have him tied with Hughes for fourth-most at the position. His season stats show a huge jump over last year\u2019s excellent output \u2014 he\u2019s almost doubled his goals total, from six last year to 11 through 69 games this season, and has already bested last season\u2019s points total by three. His plus-26 rating shows the biggest jump (up from minus-two last year!) and while it\u2019s a long shot for him to land the Norris in just his second season, the fact he\u2019s in this conversation tells us a lot about what\u2019s yet to come for this budding star.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Buffalo Sabres are the best story going in the NHL right now \u2014 between their playoff position atop the Atlantic and the Blue Jackets\u2019 third-place status in the Metropolitan, the underdog presence is powerful in the East, overall. It\u2019s no great surprise that Rasmus Dahlin has a lot to do with Buffalo\u2019s long-awaited breakout, and while he\u2019s not the top contender for the Norris Trophy, he\u2019s making an exceptional case to be among the finalists.<\/p>\n

Dahlin\u2019s 15 goals and 50 assists have him sitting seventh in both categories among defencemen, while his 65 points have him sitting sixth. That 11 of those goals and 37 of those points have been registered since the new year reenforces his role as a key propeller in the Sabres\u2019 success. His plus-20 rating since the NHL\u2019s Olympic break shows yet another surge for both player and team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Compared to his offensively elite peers, Moritz Seider\u2019s point production doesn\u2019t jump off the page \u2014 though, we know that\u2019s an incredibly high bar. That Seider\u2019s 48 points (two shy of his career-best, set as a rookie) in 70 games ranks on the low end compared to the others on this list speaks to just how talented this crop of d-men are.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It also speaks to how much we value offence in Norris conversations \u2014 offensive production tends to play an outsized role in our view of the top defenders. But Seider\u2019s dominance goes beyond his efforts on the scoresheet. His two-way play is almost unparalleled and his impact at both ends of the ice is hard to miss with his fourth-highest ice time league-wide, at 25:35 a game. It\u2019s rare to have a player with such an elite skillset also register as many blocked shots as Seider does (his 154 this season is fifth-highest; you\u2019ve got to scroll a while to find another Norris contender among the league\u2019s best shot-blockers). The Norris is likely a long shot this season, but if we\u2019re talking about truly well-rounded defenders worthy of a little more shine, Seider is establishing himself as one of the best in the game today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Miro Heiskanen is back, and he has been about as steady as they come this season. Unlike others on this list, Heiskanen hasn\u2019t had the drastic surge in production in the second half of his season. With 59 points in 68 games, he\u2019s been a consistent offensive presence from the Stars\u2019 blue line \u2014 great to see, after his season was cut short last year by a serious knee injury. While that likely puts his Norris candidacy at the lower end compared to his elite peers, he belongs in this conversation all the same. His marathon minutes (25:50 per game) rank third-highest league-wide while his playmaking (50 helpers) has been on full display. His obvious value as both a power-play quarterback for Dallas\u2019 second-ranked PP\u00a0and\u00a0excellent penalty-killer (he\u2019s the only Norris contender on this list sitting among the top defenders in PK minutes) have been on full display this season, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When we last checked in on the Norris Trophy race, we had a clear leader in Colorado Avalanche…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-557990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}