It’s a crime that peak DD8 didn’t win a least one more Norris and could easily have a Conn Smythe also.
You are never going to get the best out of him when the plan is essentially to lose. He is competitive and needs to win, which is why he’s struggled the last couple of years. He’s been better than a lot of his ‘haters’ have claimed, but he’s not been Drew Doughty either. However, he has still been great in fits and starts and has still put in the work and minutes. I’ve seen enough to tell me his drop off has been about mindset not a physical decline.
Now he’s going to be playing in a team that is supposed to be getting better and will be surrounded by skill and potential I’m convinced we will see him back to being consistently Elite. We saw what a short spell of Björnfot did for him and there was definitely an uptick when Vilardi turned up. So when those guys plus Turcotte, Kaliyev, Byfield etc are in the mix consistently he will be back at it. Has he peaked already? Quite likely. However if they manage his ice-time properly I am sure he will be Elite for a few more years yet.
Sometimes I think that then I go back to how inconsistent his regular seasons were until he broke out after the first Cup.
I think you CAN make a case he should have won the one over Keith, but no one was going to give that to a rookie over Duncan that year (of course, no one was complaining about Duncan being 'due').
Then he was a bit uneven in the regular season for a few years, even though he was flat out unstoppable in the playoffs (remember that Johnson/Doughty PP vs. the Canucks that couldn't be stopped until it became a matter of winning the series?)
Then he rattled off a few absolutely elite years where we can bicker over who deserved which, but DD and EK were absolutely
ruling the league in the regular seasons. Each deserved half of that, and Subban/Keith were always around.
The one I'm miffed about is the Hedman one. I think it COULD have gone either way, but the homer in me will complain that Drew put up nearly identical numbers while playing several more hard minutes a game on a team that he helped carry to the playoffs while VH was getting cushy offensive deployment on a massive offensive team (that and no one complained about Victor being 'due'). That and the 1st place votes were MASSIVELY tilted towards Hedman told me voters just did NOT want Doughty near that one.
He's got so many 'near' trophies that hopefully those add up, there's not a more decorated d-man around, which hopefully makes people remember him fondly even when they don't see gaudy point production (luckily we're in the advanced stat era for a retrospective. He's got some literally historic seasons that way).