How many Norris Trophies could/should Bourque have won?

[Staniowski]

When the 1990 awards results were announced, Boston coach Mike Milbury said it was a joke that Bourque had been left off six ballots, and demanded to know which writers had left him off. Good on Milbury for supporting his player, but I don't think we need to take his point of view. I don't agree that a 1990 Hart ballot without Bourque - or a Hart ballot without Messier, for that matter - is proof of voting in bad faith, especially on a ballot with only three names.

RE: Leetch over Bourque in 1991-92, I think the statistical gap in favour of Leetch was too much for Bourque to overcome. Leetch scored 21 more points than Bourque, and the Rangers finished with 21 more points in the standings than Boston. Points and team success are important for the writers, and the gaps were huge. Bourque may have been better defensively than Leetch, but Leetch was much improved defensively under Roger Neilson and was no longer a one-way player.

Much of these gaps were from the last 2 months of the season. As of January 31, the Rangers were leading the league, but were only 2 points ahead of second place Montreal and 10 points ahead of 6th place Boston. And Leetch was 1 point behind Phil Housley in defenceman scoring and 6 points ahead of Bourque. At this point the Norris voting might well have been close. But from February 1 to the end of the regular season, Leetch outscored Bourque by 15 points, and the Rangers out-pointed Boston by 11 points and won the league by 7 points.

It may also be relevant that the league shut down for 10 days in the beginning of April due to a players' strike, and voters' opinions may well have been set at this time. At the time of the strike, Bourque's stat line was 77 GP, 19 G, 57 A, 76 P, and +9. A very good season by anyone else's standards, but Bourque was in danger of finishing the season with less than a point per game for the first time in a decade, and with a single-digit plus-minus for the first time in his career.

Yes, that's a key point - there were only 1st, 2nd, and 3rd votes....why would anybody think that two players would have to both get a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd vote from every voter? BTW, has it ever happened before?

 

[Staniowski]

That seem a bit overdramatic,

1) we know, now that the vote are public that voters do that, even now that they are shamed for it, perfectly reasonable to think they did it even more
2) that the PHWA made the vote public to shame the voters that did it, at 81%.
3) The Oscar made a very complicated and virtually impossible to explain voting system for best picture, but impossible for voters to try to game for a reason.
4) It is just an hockey award, the accusation of strategic voting are the mildest, less important and the action not voting for X the easiest to do here, we are not talking about voting for who get the Olympics but the Hart.... (and what the voters or accused of, is trying to make a very worthy winner more likely to win and not in exchange of money)

It is some of the least wild and reasonable speculation about one of the least important, low stake and possible affair on earth.

The whole story - that an Edmonton writer manipulated their vote, or all three Edmonton writers banded together to manipulate their votes, or that six voters were involved in some sort of protest against Bourque - is completely bogus. There is absolutely nothing to support this, and there is no reason whatsoever to believe it happened.

The only explanation is that half of the hockey world wanted Bourque to win (probably more than half because virtually nobody disliked Bourque, and there were always people who disliked Messier), and there were some unhappy people when he didn't win, and some of them grasped onto the only thing they could - the six voters who didn't vote for Bourque. And the story goes from there....

It's a fictitious story.

 

[Steve Kournianos]

That's as generous a description as possible of 1989.

Another way to say it: he received a single third place vote in a year where three guys took up all the votes.

It’s still one more vote than 99 percent of defensemen in that particular season and any number of Hart votes for a defenseman or goalie weigh more than a forward’s, let alone in 1988-89, but that’s not the point. He was a runaway Norris winner that year despite everybody knowing full well that he played for a tight-checking team with an elite goalie and an elite checker.

And it’s important to mention Bourque’s reputation began taking hits during the 1992 Wales Final, which then started a string of early exits with Bourque either on the ice or directly responsible for decisive, in some cases iconic goals against. Hard to forget those moments as much as Bruins fans want to. What helped Bourque were elite Norris-caliber regular seasons, but it’s possible he began losing votes because of the previous playoff stuff. Again, I’m just going off the perception at the time and it’s just speculation.

Although Chelios wasn’t perfect, he had a stronger reputation beginning with that 1992 playoff run and it seemed to be reflected in his Norris voting where he placed higher than Bourque in four of five seasons between 1993-1997 despite being significantly outproduced by Bourque in that span.

 

[MadLuke]

The whole story - that an Edmonton writer manipulated their vote, or all three Edmonton writers banded together to manipulate their votes, or that six voters were involved in some sort of protest against Bourque - is completely bogus. There is absolutely nothing to support this, and there is no reason whatsoever to believe it happened.

They do not have to band together, they just need not to vote for the most likely challengers, they can vote for anyone else, there 0 coordination or need to protest against Bourque, you just need to want for Messier to win.

Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid was near unanimous 2024 Conn Smythe Trophy winner – Professional Hockey Writers Association

www.thephwa.com

we are in a world where someone just leaved Barkov off his ballot to augment McDavid chance to win:

Jim Matheson Postmedia McDavid Hyman Bouchard

I doubt that was some protest vote against Barkov, but yes there is absolutely nothing to support this (but nothing to support this could exist....), every year there is some anonymous Academy voters interview and the reason they gave for some of those votes are way worse and egregious, none would believe than what we are talking about (which is the mildest act about award voting ever talking about, it is absolutely nothing, it is not half as bad as voting for Hyman or Bouchard to be one of the rare MVP in a loosing cause in sport history over Barkov-Bobrovsky and that one was made without secret ballot).

Why did the PHWA decided to make those vote public then ?

 

[wetcoast]

We also know -- beyond dispute -- that at least 50％ of the writers who left Bourque off the ballot were not from Edmonton.

And all 63 voters picked Bourque for the Norris so it's fair to say that maybe just maybe these writers were of the opinion that Dmen had a seperate trophy already which would fall in line with recent historical Hart voting and Dmen right?

I think that it is fair to say that Bourque had a great season we don't need a Hart to know that.

 

[The Panther]

And all 63 voters picked Bourque for the Norris so it's fair to say that maybe just maybe these writers were of the opinion that Dmen had a seperate trophy already which would fall in line with recent historical Hart voting and Dmen right?

That's right, and this is not an unusual situation, historically. There's a reason that, after the Norris was created, defencemen (besides Orr and Pronger once) basically never win the Hart.

I think that it is fair to say that Bourque had a great season we don't need a Hart to know that.

Yes. I mean, would the situation somehow be wonderfully better if Bourque (the guy who went on to lose in the Finals vs. Messier, lest we forget) walked away with the Norris and the Hart, and Messier got nothing, despite being voted "best player in the League" by his peers?

I think, all things considered, the way it shook down was for the best, and was very fair.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

at first i was like, can it be right that the edmonton reporter being a jackass in 2024 was voting back in 1990? but i went to his wikipedia and

James Donald Matheson (born April 7, 1949) is a Canadian sports journalist who has covered the NHL's Edmonton Oilerssince their inception into the WHA in 1973 and the NHL in 1979.

jesus that is an old dude. i enjoy my career but i hope i’m not still working at 75.

anyway, this is what we know:

- the prevailing narrative of the season was that the hart was a two man race

- the vast majority (55 out of 63) had bourque on their ballots as one of their top two

- mathison had bourque as his number one for the norris

- mathison later chose three oilers on his cs ballot in a series they lost

- every other ballot had barkov on it (all but one as the number two) and all but one had two panthers on it

- there was much discussion in the media about whether mcdavid would win in the event of a loss, or whether voters would go with convention and choose someone from the winning team

the last fact is that in the end bourque finished two pts behind messier with the same amount of first place votes. we don’t need a conspiracy, we don’t even need a second edmonton voter. all we need is for this one guy who has shown he is not above being a jackass with his voting privileges, to not do the expected thing: have bourque on his ballot as his number two.

he was the only guy to have zero panthers on his ballot. hell he was the only guy to not have barkov on his ballot. he’s one of only two guys to not have two panthers on his ballot. it’s not a stretch to assume that he was also one of eight guys to not have bourque as one of their top two and one of six who didn’t have bourque at all, is it?

that single decision, if he did indeed make it and we’ll very likely never know, swung the hart. with a single second place vote, bourque would have tied messier in pts and won it on the second tie breaker (more second place votes).

 

[The Panther]

he was the only guy to have zero panthers on his ballot. hell he was the only guy to not have barkov on his ballot. he’s one of only two guys to not have two panthers on his ballot. it’s not a stretch to assume that he was also one of eight guys to not have bourque as one of their top two and one of six who didn’t have bourque at all, is it?

that single decision, if he did indeed make it and we’ll very likely never know, swung the hart. with a single second place vote, bourque would have tied messier in pts and won it on the second tie breaker (more second place votes).

The points that some people have made here are:

(1) Does it really matter? In 1990, one guy won the Hart and one won the Norris, which seems fair. And in 2024, McDavid won the Conn Smythe with or without Matheson's vote, so who cares either way?

And:

(2) The fact that one guy made a slightly weird vote for the Conn Smythe is 2024 does not suggest (to me) that we can logically assume he left one defenceman off a ballot 34 years earlier. Is it possible? Of course. But it's rather a big stretch to make that assumption and then beat the guy for it with absolutely no evidence showing he did or didn't put Bourque on his Hart ballot.

And if he didn't... er, so what? It's not exceptional among hockey writers then or now. As is noted, it was entirely normal back then -- and now -- for voters to leave defencemen off the Hart ballot. Some of you also keep ignoring the fact that FIVE other writers (maybe six, in fact, as we don't know for sure about Matheson) left Bourque entirely off the ballot. Are you going to just make some wild guesses which six they were? (At least three of them -- possibly more -- were Western conference enemies of the Oilers, so pretty much no chance they wanted Messier to win. Yet they left Bourque off entirely.)

I mean, if we're all lining up to beat Matheson with the no-evidence stick, why aren't we doing it for five other writers?

And while we're at it, no less than FIVE writers didn't vote for either Messier or Bourque with their first vote. Are we going to wildly speculate on who they were and damn them, 34 years later?

If we're going to play this game, there are A LOT of more wonky votes in major awards that six guys leaving Bourque off the Hart ballot in 1990!! (As examples, consider the idiot in 1985 who voted Brian Sutter 1st for the Hart, or the ass-hat in 2023 who gave McDavid his 5th place vote.)

 

[overpass]

Jim Matheson was one of the voters for the 1997 Hockey News Top 50 players of all time (later expanded to 100). He wrote in one of his columns that he had listed Messier 5th on his ballot and Mario Lemieux 8th.

The voting point totals for that project showed that Lemieux being placed lower than top 4 on a ballot wasn't uncommon, unlike subsequent HOH projects. So it wasn't a uniquely terrible placement or anything. In any case, Matheson rated Messier highly and he wasn't afraid to say it.

 

[VanIslander]

Bourque was the ketchup of the hot dog hockey.

He belonged there, and tasted good, though sometimes one relished otherwise, and put some mustard on it.

 

[MadLuke]

The fact that one guy made a slightly weird vote for the Conn Smythe

Thats the thing, you say it is just a littlbe bit weird to vote for Hyman and Bouchard to be the 6 cup looser to win the MVP over Barkov ? Because you know that not what he voted for, but a calculated and rational way to augment the chance of McDavid winning and how much it is not a big deal as long as the winner you want to win is worthy of winning.

People turn the accusation being made to a much bigger deal than they were:
) Those type of actions, but those type of voters are common and well known.
) They are a very small deal, we are taling about hockey awards here and not in exchange of money
) No conspiration, no coordination are needed, people even talked about they would have needed to know that Bourque was a likely candidate to win as if that was some big deal for an member of the press Hart voters to assume for it to be the case, when you average fans did.
) Talk about the total absence of proof has if it was special for it to not have any proof, what a proof of this would look like, it is speculating about someone mind

 

[Janvonpobben]

Bourque is very overrated. Slow skater and an average shot. Had to rely on an allstar team to win his cup. Lidstrom on the other hand was shafted in the 90s.

Romanticized by the canadians here

Ray Bourque receives DUI probation, more

Hall of Famer Ray Bourque apologized for driving drunk after his plea change resulted in probation and more penalties.

www.si.com

 

[tabness]

Bourque is very overrated. Slow skater and an average shot. Had to rely on an allstar team to win his cup. Lidstrom on the other hand was shafted in the 90s.

Romanticized by the canadians here

Ray Bourque receives DUI probation, more

Hall of Famer Ray Bourque apologized for driving drunk after his plea change resulted in probation and more penalties.

www.si.com

this is a beautiful Swedish homerism hit post lol going after two of Bourque's better abilities and then throwing in the AFTER 22 BEERS thing at the end like that lol

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Jim Matheson was one of the voters for the 1997 Hockey News Top 50 players of all time (later expanded to 100). He wrote in one of his columns that he had listed Messier 5th on his ballot and Mario Lemieux 8th.

The voting point totals for that project showed that Lemieux being placed lower than top 4 on a ballot wasn't uncommon, unlike subsequent HOH projects. So it wasn't a uniquely terrible placement or anything. In any case, Matheson rated Messier highly and he wasn't afraid to say it.

i can’t hate that

i have mario as my #10 (a fight i don’t need to engage in again, pens fans)

 

[VanIslander]

Bourque is very overrated. Slow skater and an average shot. Had to rely on an allstar team to win his cup. Lidstrom on the other hand was shafted in the 90s.

Jan von problem...

Bourque had "an average shot" is probably the most absurd statement of 2024! Congrats!

As for 'slow skater', a whopping 15 years before he retired he made money off this ad campaign (when i was in high school):
(The company was bought up by Bauer a few years later.)

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

The points that some people have made here are:

(1) Does it really matter? In 1990, one guy won the Hart and one won the Norris, which seems fair. And in 2024, McDavid won the Conn Smythe with or without Matheson's vote, so who cares either way?

And:

(2) The fact that one guy made a slightly weird vote for the Conn Smythe is 2024 does not suggest (to me) that we can logically assume he left one defenceman off a ballot 34 years earlier. Is it possible? Of course. But it's rather a big stretch to make that assumption and then beat the guy for it with absolutely no evidence showing he did or didn't put Bourque on his Hart ballot.

And if he didn't... er, so what? It's not exceptional among hockey writers then or now. As is noted, it was entirely normal back then -- and now -- for voters to leave defencemen off the Hart ballot. Some of you also keep ignoring the fact that FIVE other writers (maybe six, in fact, as we don't know for sure about Matheson) left Bourque entirely off the ballot. Are you going to just make some wild guesses which six they were? (At least three of them -- possibly more -- were Western conference enemies of the Oilers, so pretty much no chance they wanted Messier to win. Yet they left Bourque off entirely.)

I mean, if we're all lining up to beat Matheson with the no-evidence stick, why aren't we doing it for five other writers?

And while we're at it, no less than FIVE writers didn't vote for either Messier or Bourque with their first vote. Are we going to wildly speculate on who they were and damn them, 34 years later?

If we're going to play this game, there are A LOT of more wonky votes in major awards that six guys leaving Bourque off the Hart ballot in 1990!! (As examples, consider the idiot in 1985 who voted Brian Sutter 1st for the Hart, or the ass-hat in 2023 who gave McDavid his 5th place vote.)

Does it really matter is never really a respectable answer when it comes to malfeasance. It's about process even more than it is about results.

Do you even remotely defend the idea that three Oilers were more valuable than ANY member of the cup winning team?

 

[The Panther]

Does it really matter is never really a respectable answer when it comes to malfeasance. It's about process even more than it is about results.

Er... no, it isn't. When we're talking about award winners, the result is all we care about, not the process.

Matheson has a heart attack and dies before the 2024 playoffs. So... what changes, exactly? Will your life be better when the same guy wins the Conn Smythe and knowing that some random 2nd and 3rd place votes went to Florida Panthers?

There's a reason why there's a large and broad panel of voters, and not just three guys voting.

Do you even remotely defend the idea that three Oilers were more valuable than ANY member of the cup winning team?

Don't invent straw-men. Nowhere have I defended Matheson.

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

Er... no, it isn't. When we're talking about award winners, the result is all we care about, not the process.

Matheson has a heart attack and dies before the 2024 playoffs. So... what changes, exactly? Will your life be better when the same guy wins the Conn Smythe and knowing that some random 2nd and 3rd place votes went to Florida Panthers?

There's a reason why there's a large and broad panel of voters, and not just three guys voting.

Don't invent straw-men. Nowhere have I defended Matheson.

Process predicts future outcomes. Like, if the challenger had landed successfully several times with some faulty bits that were consistently f***ing up their part of the job, would you say 'eh, who cares? It landed'?

Or would you worry that at some point, the structure won't withstand the failure of the bits and something terrible (or in this case asinine) will happen.

And I'm not inventing strawmen, though I am curious if you have a yes or no response to the question.

 

[jigglysquishy]

i can’t hate that

i have mario as my #10 (a fight i don’t need to engage in again, pens fans)

Not to get too sidetracked, but I'm very curious on the rationale and your entire top 10.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Not to get too sidetracked, but I'm very curious on the rationale and your entire top 10.

i’ll admit i haven’t thought too hard about where mcdavid would now fit, but this is from 2018:

1. bobby orr
2. wayne gretzky
3. gordie howe
4. rocket richard/jean beliveau/doug harvey
7. eddie shore
8. bobby hull
9. patrick roy
10. mario lemieux

i don't like quitters. no one else on that list would willingly walk away as long as they could still strap the skates on, and none of them ever threatened to retire if the refs didn't take care of them better.

that matters, imo. we're talking about the ten greatest hockey players of all time. on ability, mario is easily top four and you could argue number three. on results, you could certainly make a very good case for him in the top five. but i count it against guys if they throw years away, just like we count it against goalies if they are inconsistent from year-to-year. can i count on mario guttinng it out every year? nope. feel the same about lindros; not his ability to stay healthy, but his willingness to just throw away a year or two of his career because he didn't like his situation enough.

 

[wetcoast]

Does it really matter is never really a respectable answer when it comes to malfeasance. It's about process even more than it is about results.

Do you even remotely defend the idea that three Oilers were more valuable than ANY member of the cup winning team?

On the flipside is it so impossible to think that Florida won because they were the better overall team and maybe the Oilers were carried more in the playoffs by their star players?

I mean it's not like the 3 Oilers stars didn't have crazy numbers or anything right?

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

On the flipside is it so impossible to think that Florida won because they were the better overall team and maybe the Oilers were carried more in the playoffs by their star players?

I mean it's not like the 3 Oilers stars didn't have crazy numbers or anything right?

hilariously this is the opposite of sedin logic

mcdavid logic = mcdavid, hyman, and bouchard all have bonkers numbers, they must all be the most valuable

sedin logic = they have each other, they are bith linemates with a scoring champ, each products of the other and nobody is valuable

 

[wetcoast]

hilariously this is the opposite of sedin logic

mcdavid logic = mcdavid, hyman, and bouchard all have bonkers numbers, they must all be the most valuable

sedin logic = they have each other, they are bith linemates with a scoring champ, each products of the other and nobody is valuable

Not sure what the reference is for as the Sedins were notoriously meh in the playoffs but maybe I'm missing something here?

Or are we pretending that the voters are all doing a deep dive all of the time?

 

[67 others]

esz

Bourque is very overrated. Slow skater and an average shot. Had to rely on an allstar team to win his cup. Lidstrom on the other hand was shafted in the 90s.

Romanticized by the canadians here

Ray Bourque receives DUI probation, more

Hall of Famer Ray Bourque apologized for driving drunk after his plea change resulted in probation and more penalties.

www.si.com

Congrats on weiner bad post of the year in advance. Bourque's skating and Lidstrom's were very close and comparable and Bourque was reknowned for his shot selection array and was superior in that regard, so by making this statement, you are saying Lidstrom was slow and a below average shot.. Neither were Paul Coffey, but both were shifty , could carry the puck up ice and gain the zone and had an arsenal of passes and shots.

And then attacking him "needing an all star team to win" is pretty lol. Let's remove Yzerman and Fedorov and Murphy/Chelios or Datsyuk/zetterberg/Rafalski and replace them with Janney + Linesman and Sweeney and see how many cups follow

As to the topic, voting over time got less reactive and focused on two way defense, as opposed to the flip flopping often done early in Bourque's career between strictly offensive and defensive guys. It always exists to a degree and changes year to year, but it was particularly reactive back then.

Lads like Carlyle, Langway and Coffey would have been more heavily penalized circa 1997-2012 For being 1 dimensional.

84 in particular looks weird by any metric. Bourque was already lauded as one of the best defensive dmen in the league by coaches, players and the media and scored 90+ points. He outscored langway by 60+ points and was only 30 points behind a Gretzky fueled Coffey who wasn't even considered decent defensively

And in several coaches polls in the early/mid 90s, Bourque was ranked THE best defensive dman leaguewide and outscored the Norris winners.

In any case, Bourque was winning his Norris trophies during the golden Era of defenseman. I feel like his 5 best years beat Lidstrom's peak year

 

[Dingo]

Bourque is very overrated. Slow skater and an average shot. Had to rely on an allstar team to win his cup. Lidstrom on the other hand was shafted in the 90s.

Romanticized by the canadians here

Ray Bourque receives DUI probation, more

Hall of Famer Ray Bourque apologized for driving drunk after his plea change resulted in probation and more penalties.

www.si.com

although i do agree that he is romanticized (by Canadians everywhere, not just here) he was exceptional, and i never considered him a slow skater. When I watch 87 CC I have to remind myself who is 7 and who is 77. Not that I'm a skating expert, because I skate like shit, but I would wager that he was faster than Lidstrom, for sure.

I do think Lidstrom was probably a better defenseman, if i had to make a pick, and I do agree that Bourque gets the glass half full treatment, and Nick the half empty. Ditto for Roy and Hasek.