Hedman is a point-generating machine from the blueline. Over the past five seasons, he has put up 321 points (66 goals, 255 assists) in the regular season

Cale Makar won the Norris Trophy. That’s not much of a surprise as the young Colorado Avalanche defenseman scored 30 goals and put up 92 points. That is as impressive of a season for a blueliner that we’ve seen in a long time. It’s also further proof that the Norris Trophy might officially be awarded to the “defense player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-around ability in the position,” but is heavily weighted to defenders who put up points. An even further indication that it’s an offense-heavy award is the voting discrepancy between two member of the Tampa Bay Lightning: Victor Hedman and Ryan McDonagh.

In the final tally of votes, Victor Hedman accumulated 265 points (0-1-11-55-38) which was good enough for fifth place. Offensively, the Tampa Bay Lightning’s captain produced another solid season. He topped 60 points for the fifth time in his career while logging 23 minutes a night. Not bad for a 34-year-old with more than 1100 regular season games under his belt.

For Hedman, it was a return to the top-five after finishing fifteenth and sixth in the previous two years respectively. The Big Swede may be slowing down a bit, but he’s still better than 90% of the defensemen on the ice when it comes to generating offense. As he heads into the first year of his new four-year contract, the Lightning will continue to look at him as a provider of offense from the blueline.

He is a point-generating machine from the blueline. Over the past five seasons, Hedman has put up 321 points (66 goals, 255 assists) in the regular season. Only Makar (378), Quinn Hughes (353), and Adam Fox (327) have more over that stretch. Give Hedman some credit, he’s holding his own among the youth, as Fox is the oldest among those players at 27, seven years younger than Hedman.

With the way the Lightning like to funnel their shots from the blueline, Hedman is a key piece to their offense, and especially their power play. After ceding his number one spot to Mikhail Sergachev for portions of the 2023-24 season, Hedman was back on the top power play unit for the majority of last year and responded with 4 goals and 22 assists.

The offense is there. The problem is, he’s not the best defensive player on his own blueline. In fact, in terms of defense, he might have been one of the worst last season. That’s not to say he’s bad, he’s pretty much, at the very least, average defensively.

Breaking it down even further, he does a lot of things pretty well defensively as All Three Zones shows in their micro-data.

Again, really good offensive numbers, and decent defensive numbers, but there are a few things that aren’t included in those categories. Looking at Hedman’s overall numbers the one that really, really stands out this season is the 119 giveaways. It was not only a career-high, but shattered his previous high, which was 79 in 2022-23. When a blueliner is giving the puck up, it’s rarely a good thing, since there usually aren’t many teammates behind him to cover up.

Now, we’re going to take a moment to mention something. According to Evolving Hockey, 33 defensemen had 100 or more giveaways this season (including McDonagh who had 115). Last season, the highest number was 82. It feels like something changed in regards to how they’re counted. That being said, Hedman, more so than ever in his career, was turning the puck over, often in the offensive zone. It isn’t so much the number of giveaways, it’s the location. Often, they’re just inside the opponent’s blueline, and when he turns it over, it leads to an odd-man rush the other way.

Ryan McDonagh received 5 points (0-0-0-1-2) in the Norris Trophy race

Now, let’s take a look at Ryan McDonagh, who received 5 points (0-0-0-1-2) in the Norris Trophy race. Offensively, he had a McDonagh-esque season with 4 goals and 27 assists, pretty much identical what he did with Nashville the previous season and slightly better than his final season with the Lightning (4 goals, 22 assists).

Let’s pull up McDonagh’s charts now:

And his micro-stats

And his defensive heat map

There is a little more red on McDonagh’s heat map, but the majority of it is from the center of the ice from distance, shots that Andrei Vasilevskiy can see, or players can block. McDonagh was also stronger at shutting down offense at the blueline. Hedman has been conceding the blueline more and more as he career has gone on, which allows the opponents a little more operating space in the Lightning zone.

The biggest thing we notice between the two players is that there is just less offense on the ice when McDonagh is out there.

The numbers were a little closer then expected, but pretty much across the board, McDonagh had the better defensive season, yet because he didn’t produce as much offensively, he was an afterthought in the Norris Trophy race.

It’s a good thing that the Lightning had their top two left-side defensemen earn votes in the Norris race, even if they did go about it in different manners.