Evan Bouchard played a clean game in a 2-1 shootout loss to the Colorado Avalanche. He moved the puck, ran the power play, logged his minutes, and didn't do much wrong. Maybe makes you want to go to bat for the guy.
And then you remember the nights when he did do something wrong, and then Norris conversation gets a little more complicated again.
But that's the story of Evan Bouchard, isn't it? 92 points, second defenseman in Edmonton Oilers history to reach 90 in a single season, first since Paul Coffey did it four straight years running in the mid-80s. Seventy assists, which tops Coffey's 67 from 1982-83 for the fourth-most ever by an Oilers defenseman in a year.
He's the leading scorer among NHL defencemen, and it isn't particularly close. It's his best offensive season by far.
But the Norris isn't a points race, and that's what you have to remember.
Bouchard's defensive game is what's always putting him in the hot seat. He's on the ice for high-danger shot attempts against at a rate that puts him among the more exposed defenders in the league. Some of it is the teammates around him on a given night, and some of it is just Bouchard making decisions in his own end that are hard to defend — pun intended.
He's a high-event player on a high-event team, and when things go wrong, they tend to go wrong in memorable ways.
Zach Werenski is the favourite. He's steadier on both sides of the puck, carried Columbus deep into the playoff picture for a while, and doesn't give voters pause the way Bouchard does.
Brady Tkachuk was asked on a podcast to name his top three Norris candidates and rattled off Werenski, Quinn Hughes, and Cale Makar without hesitation. When nudged about bias—Tkachuk plays for Ottawa, not Columbus or Colorado or Minnesota—he confirmed his list anyway. Bouchard didn't come up.
Makar, a two-time winner, carries comparable defensive baggage in the underlying numbers. His on-ice shot attempts against have been similarly problematic at points this season. Hughes built his winning 2024 campaign almost entirely on offensive production and puck movement.
The idea that Bouchard is uniquely disqualified by defensive limitations while players with similar profiles keep collecting votes is a grievance that is continually raised.
Chris Pronger made exactly that case on The Athletic Hockey Show, arguing Bouchard belongs at the top of the Norris list when you weigh both the offensive production and the defensive metrics properly. And Pronger isn't wrong that the optics around Bouchard are harsher than the actual data sometimes warrants.
But what he might fail to consider is that Makar and Hughes have track records. They've already proved they can anchor a defence when it matters. Bouchard is still in the process of proving that, and a 92-point season where the defensive questions haven't fully gone away is not automatically the year you close that case.
The trophy is for the best defenseman in the league. The best defenseman in the league has to hold up when the puck is going the other way, and Bouchard is still a work in progress in that department. A very impressive, historically productive work in progress, but a work in progress nonetheless.
Wednesday was a good example of both sides of the argument existing in the same game. Clean night, smart decisions, no obvious giveaways. A performance that makes you think the defensive ceiling is higher than his critics allow. The Oilers still lost in a shootout, which doesn't land on Bouchard, and life went on.
He probably doesn't win the Norris. The points alone aren't enough, and everyone in the voter pool knows it. But the fact that the conversation is this close, that a guy with his defensive reputation is sitting here in April with a legitimate claim, is its own kind of argument. He's not there yet, but he's closer than people want to admit.
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