We’re Living in the Golden Age of Elite NHL Defensemen
Quinn Hughes, Cale Makar and Zach Werenski are a blueline trio unlike any we've seen before.
Hockey has constantly evolved over the years, but it has undergone a particularly radical shift in recent decades. The game is faster and more dynamic, with a greater emphasis on skill than ever before — and perhaps nowhere is this change more evident than in the role of the defenseman, where the days of slow-footed, stay-at-home bruisers are receding ever further into the rearview mirror.
This season might represent the greatest showcase yet for this new breed of blueliner. So far in 2024-25, Quinn Hughes of the Vancouver Canucks, Cale Makar of the Colorado Avalanche and Zach Werenski of the Columbus Blue Jackets are all having seasons that, in isolation, would rank among the best in NHL history. To have all three playing at this level simultaneously — each offering a distinct variation on the modern D-man archetype — is a particular testament to how far the position has come and where it might be going.
Early last season, I wrote about how rare it was for a defenseman to mount a serious campaign for the Hart Trophy as NHL MVP. We haven’t seen that award won from the backline in 25 years, going back to Chris Pronger of the St. Louis Blues in 1999-2000 — himself a generational talent who spanned from the era of the heavy hitter into the age of the modern defenseman. Before Pronger, you need to go back 28 more years to the GOAT D-man himself, Bobby Orr, to find another winner from the blueline.
Point is, defensemen are usually asked to be reliable, and they can excel in a particular area (power-play QB, puck-mover, bone-cruncher, crease-clearer, shot blocker, etc.), but they don’t often distinguish themselves statistically — and narratively — enough to have a singular performance that can challenge the best forwards, or even goalies, in a given season.1
In all of NHL history, fewer than 40 defensemen have ever produced (or been on pace to produce) 24.0 or more Goals Above Replacement (GAR) per 82 team games. It’s the type of production that lands a guy in the upper echelon of the player rankings in any particular season, and there is typically one stellar defenseman at or near that level. Brent Burns had a year like that with the Sharks in the past decade, for instance, and Nick Lidström had a few of them, as did Ray Bourque.
But if you look at the GAR rankings this year, two of the top five (as of Thursday) were D-men, as were three of the top eight.
That’s quite rare to see. Or at least, it was rare before 2021-22, when Victor Hedman, Roman Josi and Makar became the first trio of defenders ever to post at least 24.0 Adjusted GAR in the same season. Together, they accounted for a combined 76.5 Adjusted GAR, and it was probably the greatest confluence of elite blueline play in NHL history. But this year, the three in question — Hughes, Makar and Werenski — are all tracking above the 24.0 GAR threshold, with a combined tally of 80.8, comfortably ahead of the Hedman/Josi/Makar trio from several years earlier.
A beautiful thing about the trio is that they all bring different flavors to the position as well.
Hughes and Makar both use their skating ability to impact the game on defense in addition to offense — both have negative (i.e., good) on-versus-off expected-goal differentials while logging more than 25 minutes per night — though Makar has been a bit more physical and logs a lot more time on the penalty kill.2 Werenski, meanwhile, is a perfect fit for Columbus as an offense-first, uptempo rushing D-man whose dynamic play style puts constant pressure on the opposing defense and goalie. For a more in-depth look at Werenski’s season, check out this post by my fellow hockey-Substacker
:
These three are simply going to be the finalists for the Norris Trophy later this year; nobody else is even close in the award’s betting odds. And that’s as it should be, given the historic three-man blueline performance we’re seeing this year. Of course, we could have seen a true Mount Rushmore for the position if a fourth D-man had stepped into the picture; candidates could have included the likes of Adam Fox, Josi or Hedman again, Evan Bouchard, Josh Morrissey or maybe Miro Heiskanen. But each has been at least somewhat down versus their recent form, stuck on disappointing/mediocre teams3 or are injured after getting a knee blown up by Mark Stone.
As it is, though, we are getting to watch three defensemen ply their trade at the absolute peak of the role, all at the same time. It’s a rare convergence of skill, opportunity and impact — one that is redefining what we expect from elite defensemen as Hughes, Makar and Werenski keep pushing the boundaries of how their position is played.
To compare the positions, netminders have won four times in the 51 seasons since Orr’s final MVP in 1971-72, versus just one for defensemen. (The other 46 have belonged to forwards.)
Hughes has laid only 6 hits (six!) in 46 games, and his PK time per game is down from 1:20 a few years ago to just 0:09 now. And yet, Hughes is also the defending Norris Trophy winner as the game’s best defenseman, and his advanced defensive metrics are fine.
To be totally fair, the Canucks actually fit under this classification, too — they are below .500 pretty deep into the regular season — though they still have 59 percent playoff odds because they lack much tough competition for the West’s final wild card spot. But Hughes is so outstanding that he has risen above his team’s struggles.
Extremely interesting. I was that guy alone on the island believing Brock Faber was deserving of the Calder over Bedard. Did your numbers agree? If so, that's an interesting twist on this story. Thanks.