Mario's Pearson award in 1986 too. I just can't grasp how a guy wins this award when he had 22 points less than the actual leader had assists that season. Were the players just sick of Gretzky at that time and had their own voter fatigue?
Carlyle in 1981 I agree, and Liut too. I was more of a fan of MacKinnon in 2018 over Hall. But I have to ask, Thornton in 2006? Why him? He ticked off a lot of boxes. Led the NHL in points, led the NHL in assists and only 4 players in NHL history had more than him in a season that year. Was the reason Cheechoo won the Rocket. He is a solid pick for the Hart. Jagr is close granted, but I think there is a better case for Thornton.
That's a tough list to crack though. Who do you take off? Maybe take off Chelios and put Fetisov in at #10. I wouldn't take Coffey off of the top 10. With Fetisov we have the 1980s to judge him on and it is just taking an educated guess how he competes with Bourque and Coffey for the Norrises. He would do just fine in an 80 game season I think. But what bothers me a bit is that we do have Fetisov from 1989-'98 in the NHL. Now I know there was a shift in cultures from the Soviet Union to North America, the language is different and he's 31 and had played a lot of exhausting hockey under Tikhonov by then. So we aren't seeing him at his best. But even so, he isn't even close to either one of Bourque or Coffey from 1989-'98. I think he's pretty close to them in the 1980s, just by guessing and seeing how he played and seeing his stats in Canada Cups and World Championships/Olympics and such. We also saw how he played on the ice, and he was certainly Doug Harvey-ish if I would describe it any way. Bourque-like too.
But I don't think you can rank him higher since he is miles behind them in the 1990s. Every season from Coffey from 1989-'96 was an elite year. Perhaps 1992 is his "worst" year. But he's still among the elite defenseman until 1996. Fetisov wasn't an elite defender in the 1990s. Bourque was still winning Norrises up until 1994 and still had good years after that, pretty much right up until 2001. I can't put Fetisov ahead of Coffey when you saw them head to head in the 1990s and even on the same team and saw that Coffey was better. We can factor in that Fetisov was tired and such but it wasn't as if Coffey and Bourque didn't play a lot of hockey either. 80 game seasons, Canada Cups, long playoff runs, etc.
