Bourques Competition - Coffey, Langway, Leetch, Murphy, Stevens, Chelios, MacInnis, Howe, Blake etc
Lidstroms - Pronger, Niedermayer, Zubov, Gonchar, Chara
They did share some of the same competition (Blake, MacInnis, Chelios etc) but the point is Bourque had a lot more high-end competition and still ended up with only two less Norris'.
Shea Weber was robbed of the Norris in 2011 and even arguably 2012 - does that mean when he's 40 we should award him two ?
** lists are the players at their peaks/primes**
Its easy to look at 40 year old Chelios and 40 year old Bourque being runner up to lidstrom and think...."Yup, its close, but in their primes, no way does Lidstrom win these ones"
The media is so fickle with how they vote for the Norris trophy.
Especially in the 80's
At times, they would simply give it to the highest scorer even if their defense was merely average or less(Coffey, Carlyle), other times, they decided to vote and reward defense only throwback guys like Langway.
I can imagine Lidstrom fans being incensed if Stevens beat Lidstrom for a Norris in the early 2000's, and remember them going ape over how much Green did not deserve consideration the year he came in 2nd to Chara ahead of Lidstrom because he played an offense first Style.
If we want to argue trophies, Bourque should have had MORE trophies(And Lidstrom less. But diluted talent era). And Not just Norris trophies. He lost a Hart to prime Gretzky and basically tied for the Hart with Prime Messier.
The year he had 96 points with +51 and behind Coffey's 126 with +52(Playing with Gretzky) and they both came in 2nd and 3rd to Langway's 33 points and +13. Ray was the best of both worlds there, and in the modern era, would have been a shoe in.
And the list goes on.
But ignoring Lidstrom/Bourque just say this out loud:
Rank these teams going into the stanley cup finals on a scale of 1 to 10 with the player capabilities the year listed:
Team 1 1996-97: Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov, Vlad Konstantinov, Larry Murphy, Mike Vernon
Team 2 1987-88: Ken Linseman, Steve Kaspar, Glen Wesley, Gord Kluzak, Reggie Lemelin
Team 3 2001-02: Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov, Chris Chelios, Matthieu Dandenault, Dominic Hasek
Team 4 1989-90: Craig Janney, Bob Sweeney, Glen Wesley, Garry Galley, Andy Moog
Team 5: 2007-08: Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Brian Rafalski, Nick Kronwall, Chris Osgood
Team 6: 1987-88: Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Steve Smith, Kevin Lowe, Grant Fuhr
Team 7: 1989-90: Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Steve Smith, Kevin Lowe, Bill Ranford