The highest he ever ranked was 4th in the league what a shame. He should have won the Norris last year in my opinion. Seth Jones is a beast and it should be noted Werenski has benefited a ton from having him for long stretches as his partner. I like both guys, I think Werenski is probably in the 10 to 20 range and I would put Jones top 3 in terms of D-man, but I don't understand how he would fall out of a top 10 scenario.
I would love to have either Trouba or Werenski come home. We cannot offersheet Werenski though this off-season CBJ has a ton of cap space and will match rather easily in my opinion. Just about any number they could match. If we did offersheet him I would put it to the length of his UFA status, that makes it at least a little harder for Cbus to match but I think they still would. They are actually going to have the cap space that they could punish us for doing it and target AA or Mantha though.
I put Jones (as a combination of his career to this point, and future potential) behind Josi, Hedman, Doughty, Giordano, Subban, Burns and Karlsson. After that group its more of a grab bag of players that exist in the 8-20 range. Carlson, Werenski, Jones, Klingberg, Pietrangelo, Keith, Weber, etc. are all good, but they aren't in that first tier of d-men. In that group you have a few young d-men that likely will move to the top tier, some who peaked there, and others who are declining from the top tier.
And again, Norris voting, to me at least, tends to go by hype. Lidstrom should have won a couple Norris's in the 90's, but he was so quietly good that he didn't. In my opinion its the least reflective of actual skill at position of any of the awards.
