chara is having a great year, no doubt.  But despite this, he is nowhere near taking the norris from Greene.  Green has 28 goals, and may even hit 30+ this year.  All this despite missing a significant number of games.

Posted by Luongo-is-my-hero on 03/29/09 at 08:08 AM ET

Yeah, but what forward in the league fears Green? Guys don’t want to play against Lidstrom and Chara. I bet top forwards lick their chops at a chance to counter-attack against Mike Green’s high-risk/high-reward style of play.

Posted by Nathan from Jonny Ericsson's ice cream truck on 03/29/09 at 08:30 AM ET

Chara’s a great defencemen, and he’s not a bad choice for Norris, but I don’t think he’d the best choice, either.  He’s superb on the PK, average at best on the PP, and good-but-not-great at ES.  He plays tough minutes and does fine, but some guys play tough minutes and do better.  Like Lidstrom, who also plays tough minutes, but does it with Osgood/Conklin instead of Thomas/Fernandez.  But he still manages to keep the goals against down, and he’s much better on the PP, and is at least close to Chara on the PK.

Mike Green definitely has a more interesting case for the Norris, because he plays the easy minutes.  His coach doesn’t like putting him out for defensive zone faceoffs.  But he generates shots and points at rates that a forward should.  He’s the best PP defenceman in the league and plays almost all of the Caps PP icetime.  He even kills penalties, although it’s hard not to describe him as “ridiculously lucky” this year on the PK.

Comparing Lidstrom to Green really is comparing apples and oranges, so it’s not even worth trying.  Green will win the Norris because he’s so different from anything we’ve seen in a long time.  But if I had to build a team for next year around one defenceman, I’d still choose a 39-year old Lidstrom as that one guy.  (Although if I had to build around two, I’d choose Green and someone like Willie Mitchell.)

Posted by Ryan from Toronto on 03/29/09 at 11:00 AM ET

Where Chara separates himself from the others is the ability to use his towering frame to completely smother opposing snipers

In eight games against his conference’s three highest scorers (Malkin, Ovechkin, Crosby), Chara has allowed them five even strength points (all assists). In twelve games against his conference’s three highest scorers (Iginla, Thornton, Getzlaf), Lidstrom has allowed them three even strength points, all assists.

Lidstrom may not have a towering frame, but he seems to smother just fine.

Posted by shep on 03/29/09 at 11:04 AM ET

The numbers speak for themselves. His 16 goals rank him among the league leaders for defencemen. His plus-24 is one of the best totals in the NHL.

Well, Lidstrom’s actually got a better +/- and also happens to be among the leaders in goals for defensemen (to be fair, Chara has three more goals, but weren’t we just told to ignore Mike Green’s scoring?).  So there goes that argument.

Yeah, Boston is having a great season, and does lead the East, but then Detroit actually has more points in the standings.  So that doesn’t work either.

Chara is taller though.  6’9” clearly beats 6’1” ...so I guess I can’t argue with Zeisberger’s choice.

Posted by PRC. on 03/29/09 at 11:42 AM ET