Midway through the 2024-25 season, it looked like Quinn Hughes was poised not only to win his second Norris Trophy in as many years, but also make an argument for the Hart Trophy.
The Vancouver Canucks' captain was clearly carrying a team that otherwise struggled to score. By the end of January, Hughes had 14 goals and 59 points in 47 games despite missing four games and playing through all of January with an obvious hand injury.
That's impressive production, even before you consider the dysfunction that was barely behind the scenes for the Canucks. The highest-scoring forward on the team had just 35 points when Hughes had 59 and it was J.T. Miller, who had just been traded to the New York Rangers. That Hughes was still piling up points and tilting the ice in such a positive direction was all the more impressive with that in mind.
Unfortunately, Hughes then dealt with an oblique injury that took him out of the lineup for several weeks in February. He pushed hard to return as quickly as possible, but was clearly struggling through the rest of the season and missed more games in March.
By the end of the season, Hughes had fallen to third in scoring among defencemen behind Cale Makar of the Colorado Avalanche and Zach Werenski of the Columbus Blue Jackets. It's likely not a coincidence that is also how they finished in Norris Trophy voting from the Professional Hockey Writers Association, which went in point order: Makar with 92 points, Werenski with 82 points, and Hughes with 76 points.
The NHL announced on Wednesday that Makar had won the Norris as the NHL's greatest "all-around" defenceman. It's the second Norris Trophy of his career, along with a second-place finish and two third-place finishes.
Hughes was third on the majority of Norris ballots, though he did receive 39 second-place votes, and two first-place votes. Full disclosure: one of the first-place votes was on my ballot.
Shockingly, seven of the 191 voters did not even have Hughes on their ballot, which is shocking. To not have Hughes in the top-five at all is wild, considering if not for injuries derailing his season, Hughes ought to have beaten Makar to a second Norris and, even with injuries, Hughes was third in defencemen scoring and second in points-per-game.
Not that Makar is unworthy of the award, of course. Makar had the first 30-goal season of his career — the first by a defenceman since Mike Green in the 2008-09 season — and was a force on the Avalanche blue line at both ends of the ice.
He certainly had a lot more support than Hughes. Nathan MacKinnon was second in the NHL in scoring with 116 points, more than twice as many as the highest-scoring Canucks forwards, Brock Boeser and Conor Garland, who had 50 points.
Werenski also had a stupendous season, setting a career-high with 82 points, which led the Blue Jackets in scoring and nearly carried them to the playoffs, finishing just two points shy of the final Wild Card spot in the East.
Werenski carried Columbus while they dealt with injuries to a lot of their top forwards, like Sean Monahan, Kent Johnson, and Boone Jenner. The Blue Jackets relied on him so heavily that he finished first in the NHL in time on ice, averaging 26:45 per game. He definitely deserved to be a Norris finalist.
