Evan Bouchard for Norris? Analyst Pushes Back on His Critics

Evan Bouchard’s amazing 2025-26 season continued on Thursday night in a massive divisional clash with the Vegas Golden Knights. He picked up another two points (one goal, one assist), including the overtime game-winner, thanks to a snipe over the blocker of Adin Hill.

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It’s just the latest example of the tremendous year Bouchard is having, as he remains alone atop the NHL defensemen scoring leaderboard, with Zach Werenski—the only one still in sight—seven points behind. While putting up these kinds of numbers from the blue line would almost always result in at least being a finalist for the Norris Trophy, many remain skeptical of Bouchard, particularly when it comes to his defensive play and turnovers.

Those can be issues at times, but it feels like they’re rather overblown, and analyst Mike Kelly backed that up during a segment on Prime Coast to Coast on Thursday, reaffirming that Bouchard should be among the favorites for the Norris.

Kelly said:

“A lot of his detractors are going to tell you, well, it’s the defensive side of the game where he should be taken away from the other leading contenders for the Norris Trophy and not put in that same bucket. You can look at things like expected goals percentage, goals for and against—he’s good in all those areas—but detractors will point to the turnovers, how often he gives the puck away. And yeah, Bouchard does turn the puck over quite a bit, as do all the other star players in the league who have the puck on their stick a lot. So what we do is look at turnover rate relative to possession—how often do you turn it over? For Evan Bouchard, over the last four years, he’s actually gotten better, and he was never really bad in this sense. He’s turned the puck over on just over 11% of his puck possessions this season, which is top 15 among defencemen in the NHL

Now, what detractors will also say is it’s the egregious nature of these turnovers—how many lead to chances and goals against. We can look at that too, and in doing so, compare him to Cale Makar and Zach Werenski. Turnover rate—they’re all pretty comparable, with Bouchard right in the middle of those two. As for how many of those turnovers lead to scoring chances against, Bouchard is slightly higher than the other two, but not by a meaningful margin that should take him out of a legitimate Norris Trophy conversation,”

The 26-year-old has, as mentioned, been remarkably productive from the back end this season, with 84 points (20 goals, 64 assists) through 73 games played so far.

Despite all of his brilliance, FanDuel still gives Zach Werenski (-360) and Cale Makar (+370) much better odds than Bouchard (+1600) to win the award.

Both Werenski and Makar are having great seasons, but what Bouchard is doing is special and deserves to be recognized. He needs 16 points over his final nine games to become just the seventh defenseman in NHL history to record 100 points in a season. Perhaps that feat could sway the narrative in his favor, just as it did for Erik Karlsson in 2022-23.

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