A while back, NHL.com was running their "30 teams In 30 Days" feature, basically giving a season preview for all 30 teams. I was reading the Pittsburgh Penguins edition, when something caught my eye. They happened to mention the signing of defenceman Jay McKee. That made me upset because he used to be with the St. Louis Blues, my team. He was one of my favourite players all three years he was with us. And now he was gone, miles away, in a Pittsburgh Penguins sweater. As if that wasn't bad enough, while analyzing how well he'd do with his new team, they gave him a decent outlook, even though "he'll never win a Norris Trophy."
That really raised my blood pressure. As I was talking about it with my good friend Melina, she kindly pointed out Jay's poor point production may have something to do with it. It was the second time someone suggested his lack of scoring had to do with his release from St. Louis. While watching the news one day, the sports analyst also mentioned McKee's low point totals since joining the Gateway City. This confused me. Defencemen aren't supposed to be big-time goal scorers, they're supposed to stop the puck from entering their net. It's the forwards' jobs to score, not the defencemen's. Not that a d-man scoring is a bad thing. I have no problem with it, but it shouldn't be used to judge them. And barring offensive capabilities, there's no reason Jay McKee (or any other shot-blocking specialist) should be labeled as one who has no chance at even being nominated for a Norris Trophy. But I realized, that is probably exactly the reason McKee was released from St. Louis.
After doing some research, I confirmed it. Several Norris Trophy winners had high goal totals. For example, Bobby Orr. He was either 2nd or 3rd on his team in goals scored 4 out of his 8 years as a Norris winner. Paul Coffey is the highest-scoring Norris Trophy winner of all time, with 48 goals scored (not to mention a +61 rating) in 1986. Rob Blake scored 23 goals in his 1998 Norris year, despite a -3 rating, which is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to determine a defenceman's effectiveness on the ice. The lowest-scoring Norris winner was Rod Langway, notching 3 goals in 1983. The average for goals scored among Norris Trophy winners is 18, which is 6th in overall team scoring.
Jay McKee's +/- rating was a -2 in his first season as a Blue, which rose to +2, then +11 this past season. In my opinion, that's improvement. Goalscoring aside, McKee has accumulated acceptable +/- ratings throughout his NHL career, and he has done a tremendous job of keeping the puck out of the net. He is known throughout the league as one of the best shot blockers today. He may be injury-prone, but he is amazing at what he does. He wasn't named one of the Buffalo Sabres' alternate captains in 2006 for nothing. Despite all he has going for him, whoever wrote NHL.com's Penguins preview still feels he'll never win a Norris Trophy.
It's unfortunate that scoring plays a role in determining how good a defenceman is, not just his skills on defence. If Bobby Orr, Paul Coffey, Dennis Potvin, Al MacInnis, all had not scored as many goals as they had, would they still have won the Norris Trophy? If Drew Doughty would have scored more this past season, would he have had a better chance at winning the Calder Trophy? If Mike Green wouldn't have scored as many goals as he did in 2009, would he have been nominated? I tend to think not. What if Rod Langway would have scored as many goals as Doug Wilson before him? Would he have won more Norris Trophies? With the NHL's unneccessary yet growing (and perceived) dependency on offensively-minded d-men, I tend to believe so. People like Jay McKee and Drew Doughty are great players who are crucial to their teams. They don't score much, but there's no reason that should matter. While goals by a defenceman isn't neccessarily a abd thing (goals are goals, after all), but they should not be a defenceman's primary objective. Instead of judging them based on goalscoring, let's take their primary role more seriously and judge them for what they really are supposed to do: stop the other team from scoring.
