What Was the Deal with Doug Harvey?

It would be absurd to call Doug Harvey "overrated" even if it was true. He was the best defenseman in the NHL between Eddie Shore and Bobby Orr; to say that maybe he should have won five Norris Trophies rather than seven is hair-splitting to the nth degree. But he seems to have picked up a strange reputation, or perhaps a reputation for having a reputation.

Everyone has heard that Doug Harvey thought so many steps ahead that people thought he was lazy; he'd circle back with the puck, find the outlet, and put the biscuit in the right place without making a Broadway show out of it. But he also made the All-Star Game twelve years in a row and won seven of the first nine Norris trophies; how can you say it other than that everybody always knew Doug Harvey was an amazing hockey player?

Indeed, though Harvey's generational excellence is unquestionable he still got more laurels than his due. He came second in the voting for the first Norris trophy to Red Kelly in 1953–54 because Kelly, who nearly won the Hart and probably should have, had a much better year. Harvey beat Kelly, and everybody else, to the Norris the next season, and in six seasons after that. He usually got 50% of the vote, more-or-less. He was sometimes pretty clearly the best defenseman in the league, and sometimes not; when Pierre Pilote won the Norris in 1962–63 it was after, ironically enough, his worst season in a few years because voters had got over their Harvey impulse. Pilote certainly should have beaten Harvey to the Norris in 1959–60; there's just no question. In 1961–62 Harvey also should have lost the Norris, probably to Jean-Guy Talbot: the voters seem to have been desperate to cheer Doug off after the Canadiens let him go, Harvey played just well enough to be credible, and if you were sick of the love-in choosing between Talbot and Pilote was not easy. Luckily for the reputation of the game Pilote got his three Norrises in a row, but Talbot missed his only chance out of misplaced sentiment.