Who will catch the eye of the voting contingent at the Professional Hockey Writers' Association and be named the NHL's best defenseman during the upcoming 2015-16 season.
The Norris Trophy fraternity has been a pretty closed club for the last several years. Over the eight seasons since 2007-08, as the Nicklas Lidstrom years started to wind down, just 11 different players have been named top-three finalists and only five have won the award during that span—Lidstrom (twice), Zdeno Chara, Duncan Keith (twice), P.K. Subban and Erik Karlsson (twice).
Bearing those facts in mind, while predicting the landscape for the upcoming season, you'll see a lot of familiar names in this slideshow. Most of the usual suspects are in or approaching their playing prime, so the top performances will most likely be determined by whose team catches fire and which players stay healthy.
Other veteran candidates to watch next year include Mark Giordano of the Calgary Flames—who'd been a Norris favorite in 2014-15 until his season was derailed by a biceps injury in February—perennial ice-time leader Ryan Suter of the Minnesota Wild and Brent Burns of the ...
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Article written by Carol Schram
Predicting the Top Candidates for the 2015-16 Norris Trophy
August 4th, 2015 by Carol Schram Leave a reply »
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