The NHL awards show is approaching and while some trophies are seemingly set in stone, others like the James Norris Trophy could go to all three contestants. The nominees this year are Victor Hedman of the Tampa Bay Lightning, Drew Doughty of the LA Kings, and P.K. Subban of the Nashville Predators. All three are elite talents but there’s no clear front-runner. That is, until you look at the stats.

Subban was a dominating force in all three zones for the majority of the season while lugging around a partner that would be considered a third pairing guy at best. Despite playing with an anchor, Subban managed to put up comparable offensive numbers. While we’re making excuses, I should mention that Hedman did miss about five games or so during the regular season. Regardless, Hedman leads the pack with 62 points, but Doughty and Subban aren’t far behind with 60 and 59, respectively. Things are almost identically close when only accounting for points during even strength. Doughty led with 39 while Hedman put up 35 and Subban produced 33. Subban leads the pack in primary points at even strength, but it’s as close as the other point totals I’ve presented.

So far through the argument, I’d probably give the Norris to Doughty, but that could just be me overvaluing even strength points. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty, to help make this a little easier, I’ve decided to create a graph rather than throwing numbers at you. All stats you see below are at even strength unless explicitly stated otherwise.

The first two columns don’t paint Subban in a great light but the third adds a bit of context. Subban was taking on first line competition each and every night while mostly starting in the defensive zone. Talk about the opposite of being sheltered. While Doughty and Hedman also mostly faced top-line opponents, they got a helping hand from their coaches as they started most of their shifts in the offensive zone.

The possession stats are pretty close across the board even if Doughty leads both categories. I don’t really see any meaningful separation, although Doughty’s numbers are better relative to his teammates. Hedman and Subban played for much better teams and so their relative numbers don’t stand up as well, even if both are still better than their teammates. The saving grace for Subban here is that both Doughty and Hedman see some semblance of shelter. Subban is the only defenseman who had an above average Corsi while starting in the offensive zone less than 45% of the time with the at least 1000 minutes played. While the other two have better numbers, Subban wins this category because of the situations he earned his stats in.

While possession stats didn’t do much to differentiate the three defensemen, scoring and high danger chances start to put distance between players.

I’m sure you can tell from the beautiful looking graph I created, but Hedman is looking like the runaway victor (puns). While he did receive the most offensive zone starts of the three, there’s no excuse for the discrepancies. High danger chances is where Hedman shines as he beat the Doughty by just over five percent. What’s interesting is that Subban demonstrably had the worst high danger share of the three, yet gave up the second least amount of chances against. Hedman had about 50 less high danger chances against than Subban, while putting in work on offense. Doughty led in terms of high danger chances for with 303, but wasn’t too far ahead of Hedman’s 296.

Scoring chances tells the same story as high danger chances, although with much larger numbers for all three stars. I think Hedman takes this round in a void, but we live in a world of context. The issue I keep coming back to is that Subban was primarily used in a defensive role and the numbers have trouble reflecting that because he’s given up more scoring chances and high danger chances. It doesn’t help that the Predators’ system was super lackadaisical in the defensive end, but that’s an article for another time.

We can only speculate what numbers Doughty and Hedman would produce if they played in a similar role, but unfortunately that’s impossible. So as I said before, Hedman wins this one running away.

Now that we’ve taken a look at on-ice stats, let’s go a bit deeper and take a peek at per 60 numbers. For those who are unaware, per 60 stats measure a player’s contributions per 60 minutes played. It’s so we can tell who’s making contributions on the ice as well as who’s feeding off his linemates. For instance, Viktor Arvidsson had and has incredible shots per 60 numbers, a stat that often predicts scorers, which made him a hipster pick to break out two or three years ago. When he finally got that ice time, the stats continued and Arvy became a household name in Nashville.

The reason why I’m looking at these numbers is that I want to see how much one player is contributing. I mentioned earlier that Hedman leads in terms of points, but Subban scored the most primary points. That’s a big deal in my opinion, primary points show a direct hand in creating offense, while secondary assists could be a benefit of playing with a talented partner. How many secondary assists did Alexei Emelin receive because he passed the puck off to Subban who made an incredible play to score? The point is that these per 60 stats show who is the straw that stirs the drink.

I hate to be that guy, but I feel at this point I should probably just count Drew Doughty as out of the race. While he was great this season, he really doesn’t hold a candle to Hedman or Subban in terms of stats. Most of Doughty’s stats came from secondary assists and suggest that he was mostly involved with producing zone exits and entry defenses rather than scoring.

Hedman once again wins the overall battle, but it’s not surprising to see Subban wins in terms of primary points. Subban was the driving force behind the Predators’ offense for the first two-thirds of the season until he took on more defensive responsibility. Credit to where it’s due though, Hedman had the second best goals per 60 of any defender who played over 1000 minutes, meanwhile Subban came in fifth for primary assists per 60. Both were elite offensive talents in their own right and while Hedman produced better overall numbers, my bias towards primary points shines through. Subban earned this one.

Let’s actually discuss defense though and more importantly, zone entries and zone exits. The wonderful table below was put together by Corey Sznajder and CJ Turtoro, so shoot them some money on Patreon if you can. Anyways, let’s go to the chart.

So, a couple things you should know, the numbers you above see are percentiles so Subban didn’t break up 95 zone entries per minute, but rather he was in the top five percent of all defensemen. Also, both players weren’t tracked for the entire season but both had over 23 games and 450 minutes which is a decent enough sample size.

We’ve already talked at length about shot contributions and we decided Hedman did more, but zone entries is different. Hedman was inarguably better at breaking through the opposition’s defense and taking the offensive zone, but he also maintained possession more often. I think this has to do with the fact Subban was uncharacteristically cautious through the majority of the season and often found himself bringing the puck up during friendly line changes. I counted once or twice a game where Subban would charge up the ice and take a look around to find that he was without backup. So he’d force an offensive zone start for the Predators by flipping the puck to the opponent’s goalie while “charging” the net. Still, Subban was better than average in both entries per 60 as well as controlled possession entries, but Hedman was quite a bit better.

Where Hedman shined as he dominated zone entries, Subban was one of the best in the league at successfully exiting his zone. Subban was incredible at taking the puck up the ice and often didn’t hesitate. He never overthought his situation as his decisiveness gave him a split second edge. This is where I usually get a couple of eyebrow raises and this question, “George, what about Subban’s terrible blunders where he gave the puck up in his own zone?”. My answer is always, yeah that is going to happen when a player carries the puck up the ice as much Subban does.

The other gratifying thing for Subban is how he maintains possession when exiting the zone. Anyone can throw the puck off the glass, but what’s that good for? It’s a desperate move that surrenders possession. Subban rarely dumps the puck off, instead electing to making a crisp first pass or move the puck up the ice himself. I’m not saying Hedman is bad at exiting the zone, his numbers are really NICE and in the top third of the league, but Subban is just on another level.

Then there’s actual “defense”, that is, just zone entry defense. We really don’t have any good stats to determine actual defensive prowess, so instead we’ll use zone entry defense. As you can tell from the chart, Subban comes off looking like a golden god. Subban’s numbers are borderline stupid, I mean he’s in the top three percent at not allowing possession entries? C’mon those are video game numbers, only the hardcore defensive defensemen had better numbers and they don’t produce on offense like Subban does.

I’ve often heard that some players are “hard to play against”, but no one exemplifies this more than Subban. He was nasty, mean, and downright elite in his own zone this season and he protected the blueline in such a manner. Hedman was a bit of a pushover, as players often targeted him over better defensive players like Anton Stralman or Dan Girardi (that felt weird to write). Through these numbers, I really think Subban wins this round.

So, in conclusion, who wins? Well it’s Marc-Edouard Vlasic of course! The best defensive defenseman in the league who eats tough minutes and slows elite players like Connor McDavid down to a grinding halt. My dream of a defenseman who dominates the defensive aspects of the game winning this award will likely never happen, but I truly believe Subban deserves it most of the nominated candidates.

While Hedman produced better offensive numbers, Subban’s per 60 stats, possession stats, and defensive numbers make him the clear winner. I’m not sure what politics will play into the voting, or if this is “Hedman’s turn”, but I think the stats clearly point towards Subban being the winner of the 2017-18 Norris Trophy.