There’s a bit of a belief in hockey circles that good things are often followed by bad things. There’s the concept of regression. The notion of a Stanley Cup hangover. The dreaded sophomore slump.
One doesn’t typically hear much about any Norris Trophy hangovers or slumps, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. With that in mind, and with the Vancouver Canucks’ own Quinn Hughes coming off the first Norris Trophy of his career in 2023/24, we thought it might be worthwhile to examine the next seasons of those ten Norris winners who came before Hughes. We’re looking for a trend here, and trying to figure out whether there’s any reason to worry about any sort of comedown for Hughes after an award-winning campaign.
Duncan Keith, 2013/14 Norris Winner
We hate to start off your reading experience with mention of Duncan Keith. In order to make this less pleasant, please enjoy the following clip:
In any case, we can’t deny the fact that Keith won the 2014 Norris through one of the best regular seasons in his career, including a career-high 55 assists and 61 total points in 80 games. Keith did follow that up with a relatively disappointing playoff run in which he only notched 11 points in 19 games as his Blackhawks fell to the Kings in the Western Conference Finals.
The next year, Keith did experience a bit of a post-Norris slump…but only in the regular season. He saw his point totals dip down to just 45 points in 80 games, the lowest per-game rate he’d scored at since his third year in the league.
But then Keith more than made up for it in the playoffs, notching 21 points in 23 games on route to the Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe Trophy. It’s hard to call that a slump – more like a player who learned to keep more in the tank for the postseason.
Erik Karlsson, 2014/15 Norris Winner
Karlsson is the only player with two Norrises on his mantle from the past decade, and they came almost a decade apart. His first, in 2014/15, actually occurred during a bit of a personal slump. Karlsson scored 74 points in 2013/14, then dipped down to 66 in 2014/15, but won the Norris all the same.
In his follow-up 2015/16 campaign, Karlsson went PPG with 82 points in 82 games, the highest totals of his career until that 101 point campaign in 2022/23.
So why did he win the Norris in a down year? Primarily because, in 2014/15, Karlsson added a great deal of defensive competency to what was already an offensively dynamic game, and he was rightly recognized for it.
Either way, still no evidence of a slump to be found here. Kind of the opposite.
Drew Doughty, 2015/16 Norris Winner
Doughty had one of the best seasons of his career in 2015/16, playing his usual ungodly amount of minutes and putting up 14 goals (a career-high, until last year) and 51 points through 82 games.
His performance did dwindle a little the following year, for 2016/17, but only barely. His numbers dropped down to “just” 12 goals and 44 points, and that’s largely attributable to the Kings around him becoming a lesser team. They missed the playoffs in 2016/17 after making it the following year.
By 2017/18, Doughty was back up to 60 points, the most he’s ever scored in one season, and the Kings were back in the playoffs, albeit briefly. So, technically speaking, his post-Norris 2016/17 campaign was a bit of a slump, but reallynot much of one.
Brent Burns, 2016/17 Norris Winner
Burns won the Norris primarily through a mind-boggling 29-goal season in 2016/17, to go along with his 76 points – though it was his second year in a row with very similar numbers.
For 2017/18, Burns did slow down a little in the points department and A LOT on the goals, plummeting from 29 goals to just 12. He also saw his plus-minus swing from +19 to -16, even as the Sharks continued to perform well as a team.
Given that Burns would be back up to a career-high 83 points the following year, and a run to the Stanley Cup Final, it’s probably fair to call his 2017/18 a slump, and certainly the most prominent we’ve found from a Norris winner thus far.
Victor Hedman, 2017/18 Norris Winner
Hedman dominated at both ends of the ice in 2017/18, scoring 63 points in 77 games on a Tampa Bay team that was clearly on the rise. He’d go on to add 11 more points in 17 playoff games that year.
Hedman would suffer from injuries the following year that limited him to 70 games and 54 points, and then just two pointless games in the 2018/19 postseason.
For Hedman, it was both a miniature slump and the start of an ongoing battle to stay healthy that would dog him for the next two seasons. Then again, he also won two Stanley Cups and a Conn Smythe in those two seasons, so it’s safe to say he wasn’t suffering too much.
Hedman’s post-Norris skid, if it can be called that, was almost entirely circumstantial.
Mark Giordano, 2018/19 Norris Winner
Okay, you probably could have guessed that the player most likely to experience a post-Norris slump was Giordano, who won the award at the ripe ol’ age of 35.
It’s hard to put into words how anomalous Giordano’s performance was in 2018/19. He went from 38 points in 82 games the year before to 74 points in 78 games to win the Norris. It’s a point-total he hadn’t ever even approached prior, and one he certainly hasn’t since.
When Giordano dropped back down to an injury-strewn 2019/20 season that saw him claim just 31 points in 60 games, one could definitely call it a post-Norris slump, and indeed the most severe case of it that we’ll find on the list.
Then again, it could also be framed as Giordano simply coming back down to Earth after a very, very special year.
Roman Josi, 2019/20 Norris Winner
Josi really came into his own in 2019/20, joining the upper-echelons of NHL defenders with a run of 65 points in 69 games before the COVID-19 pandemic cut the regular season off at the knees.
The follow-up 2020/21 season was also subsequently truncated, and that coincided with what definitely be called a slump in production for Josi – down to just 33 points in 48 games and little consideration for a second Norris.
That slump looks even slumpier when Josi’s next campaign, in 2021/22, saw him post up 96 points in 80 games. He, like a few of the other Norris winners on our list, saw a brief dip in production after his Norris, and then continued right on his merry way to elite numbers.
Adam Fox, 2020/21 Norris Winner
Avoiding that aforementioned sophomore slump altogether, Fox won the Norris in just his second season in the league, posting 47 points in 55 games due to a pandemic-shortened schedule. A youthquake had clearly hit NHL bluelines.
You’ll find no evidence of any slumping here, either. Fox followed up in 2021/22 with 74 points in 78 games, which is still his career-high two seasons later, and received plenty of buzz for a second consecutive Norris.
Cale Makar, 2021/22 Norris Winner
Yeah, 2021/22 was a pretty good year for Makar. He racked up 28 goals and 86 points in 77 games during the regular season, won the Norris, and then put up 29 points in 20 playoff games on the way to the Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe.
Going from that to just 66 points the following year sure sounds like a slump, but it’s almost all due to the considerable injuries that limited Makar to just 60 games.
Sure, he was back up to 90 points for 2023/24, and 66 points does look paltry sandwiched between those two totals. But his 2022/23 campaign still can’t be called a true slump, just a mildly unfortunate season that he immediately bounced back from.
Erik Karlsson, 2022/23 Norris Winner
The last entry on our list is definitely the weirdest. Karlsson went through four seasons of 45 points in 53 games, 40 points in 56 games, 22 points in 52 games, and 35 points in 50 games after being traded to the San Jose Sharks. His days of chasing the Norris seemed to be at an end.
Then, out of nowhere, Karlsson exploded for 101 points in 82 games for the 2022/23 season, making it all but impossible not to award him with the Norris despite the many gaps in his defensive game.
Most predicted a comedown in points for 2023/24, but some held out hope that being traded to Pittsburgh might keep him on the up-and-up. Nope. Karlsson slipped all the way back down to 56 points in 82 games for 2023/24, one of the worst offensive campaigns of his career.
Again, due to the anomalousness of his 2022/23 season, it’s hard to call his a true slump. But either way, it stands alongside Giordano’s 2018/19 season as the sharpest post-Norris decline of the past decade.
Conclusions
Good news, everyone. There’s not really much of a post-Norris slump for Quinn Hughes to worry about.
There is a slight general downward trend in points in the seasons following Norris wins, but those instances are almost all circumstantial, related to either age or injury. Which makes sense, really. To win the Norris, everything has to go right for a defender. How likely is it for everything to go right for two years in a row?
The only major post-Norris decline we found was in those two players, Giordano and Karlsson, who won the Norris in their 30s, and that’s probably to be expected, too.
So what does this little trip down memory lane tell us about what to expect for Hughes in 2024/25?
It tells us not to be entirely surprised or disappointed if his point-totals drop a little. But it also tells us to expect, in general, for Hughes to perform just as well as he did last year.
