Streit for Norris

Islanders defenseman Mark Streit currently leads all NHL defensemen with 32 points. That’s more than Nick Lidstrom, Dan Boyle, Scott Niedermayer, Dion Phaneuf and Tomas Kaberle, five of the top offensive defensemen in the league. On top of that, he’s only a -4 on a team that has been a total disaster defensively and has been a force on a powerplay that was one of the worst in the league last season.

Did you just hear that? I thought I just heard the entire Montreal Canadiens organization slap itself in the face. I don’t know, maybe I’m hearing things.

Let’s not even mention the fact that he’s playing more than adequate defense despite barely playing the position at even strength last season. He’s also been a physical presence. Is he Trent Hunter on the boards or Mitch Fritz in the fighting department? Absolutely not, I doubt he’s even received a fighting major in his career, but he is able to get pucks out of the neutral zone and can clear the net, in addition to landing a hit when he has to.

That alone should make him a top candidate for the Norris trophy as the league’s top defenseman.

However, with the Islanders tanking this season, Streit’s play has gone totally unnoticed. In my opinion, not only should he be in the starting lineup for this season’s All-Star game, he should be a candidate for the Norris trophy if he keeps this play up the rest of the reason. There is no reason why he should be punished because the team he plays on can’t win hockey games. If he was playing on any other team in this league, he’d be getting articles written about him every day and would be a labeled one of the league’s newest stars.

What a shame.

The same thing happened to Adrian Aucoin a few years ago, when he was averaging close to 30 minutes a game and was easily the best two-way defenseman in the league.

Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.

As far as I’m concerned, the only way Streit gets the award is if he can make himself the only plus player on the team and get a point a game by season’s end. If he’s at 80 points and is a +2 or +3, you’d have to be crazy not to give him that award.

But then again, this is coming from a league that has allowed only four teams to be represented in the starting lineup of the All-Star game. Asking for them to do the right thing at this point seems impossible.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.