Taylor vs. Tyler

Craig Buffoon -- I mean Button -- decided to re-draft the 2010 picks, and for some mind-bottling reason, he put Seguin ahead of Hall. His Blurbs seem to indicate that Seguin's strong playoff performance combined with Button's assessment that Hall needs a complimentary center are reasons for flip-flopping the two. First, let me just say I believe in Seguin's ability to continue to grow and some day become a top 6 forward in the NHL.

What I don't really understand is how anything that transpired last season would do anything to change anyone's mind, even from a pure 'I'm only judging them based on future potential' perspective.

Numbers after the jump:

Lubomir Visnovsky should win the Norris

Unfortunately, he's not even nominated. Those nominations went instead to Detroit’s Nicklas Lidstrom, Boston’s Zdeno Chara and Nashville’s Shea Weber. At first blush, it seems like the list is a near perfect one: Lidstrom second in points and his team having ANOTHER solid year, Chara dominant as ever, and Weber leading an offence starved Preds team to another playoff berth. The optics are good for those picks, but considering the raw numbers I'm about to throw at you, I think you can easily make a strong case for the waterbug from Topolcany, Slovakia.

As before, I think it is valuable to delve into the numbers a bit to get an unbiased look at how they performed respective to each other. Considering that some of group that is voting for the Norris has probably seen as much of these guys as I have, it makes sense to go with hard numbers before any of the sentimental, seen-him-good type arguments are put forth.

Here are the Boxcars and their teams 5v5 goals for/against ratio (think of it like a team +/-).

Name	TOI/G	GP	Goals	Assists	Points	+/-	S%	Team 5-5 F/A
NICKLASLIDSTROM	23:28	82	16	46	62	-2	9.1	1.02 (15th)
ZDENOCHARA	25:26	81	14	30	44	33	5.3	1.40 (1st)
SHEAWEBER	25:19	82	16	32	48	7	6.3	1.16 (6th)
LUBOMIRVISNOVSKY	24:17	81	18	50	68	18	11.8	0.89 (21st)

Some things to consider: based on the team 5v5 for and against rates, Visnovsky has the most impressive plus minus rating: 2nd on his team which only had 6 guys over +1. Weber has the worst; he was only 12th best on his whole team! Some people might question Lubo's shooting rate, but he's been over 11% 4 of his last 7 seasons (his career number is 9%).

By pure offensive boxcars it is pretty clear that Lubomir was king and by a decent 10% margin or so. i would say he has a clear advantage on +/- versus team performance, and the shooting performance IS repeatable.

I dive into the advanced numbers after the hop.