anytime your best point of distinction in comparing two players is the number of runner up votes your guy got for an award, there is a pretty good chance you are overstating your argument.
Fine, let's ignore his five top 5 Norris finishes and nine top 10 finishes for a minute and look at this another way. Who do you think of when you think of defensemen in Hatcher's prime?
Is Kevin Hatcher in the first 5 names you think of? top ten? With Bourque, Leetch, Stevens, Chelios, MacInnis, Pronger and Lidstrom playing in their primes at the same time as him I don't think there's you can say there's a case to be made for Kevin Hatcher over Weber.
When you think of defenseman between '08-15 you may think Lidstrom, Chara, Keith, Weber, Doughty and Karlsson. Weber doesn't look out of place on that list compared to someone like Hatcher.
Weber has been a top 25 player in the entire league and top 5 at his position for 5-10 years. He's going to get into the hall.
I do think he probably makes it in the end but I think he somewhat fell off the surefire HHOF lock trajectory he was on. At some point he was a lock to win a Norris or a few but it just never happened - someone always happened to have a better peak season. Bringing up some worse-than-top5/top10 finishes in any award voting is pretty useless in my opinion though. It just needs a couple of stupid/homer votes for a player to place relatively high.
I somewhat agree with you, but mostly on the point that the Norris is voted on by hockey writers which could lead to homer votes, but at the same time do you really think Weber benefited in his prime years, playing on a Predator squad before Nashville was the "it city"? As opposed to, say an established defenseman that played on an original 6 team?