There is a great deal of excellence when it comes to young NHL blueliners these days and the Norris Trophy candidates are an adequate gauge of that talent. All three nominees are under the age of 26 and are now leading their teams by example from the goal line of their own zone, generally to the hash makrs of the offensive zone. You can see a lot in common with these players; great vision, smooth skating and very responsible are the three things that come up when talking about these guys. You should be able to make a reasonable case for each one of these and none should come as a surprise if their name is called at the ceremony.
Starting with the league's defenseman scoring leader, Mike Green had another good season and he was rewarded with a second consecutive Norris Trophy nomination. Green finished the season with 19 goals and 57 assists in 75 games in Washington, all scoring numbers led the league among defensemen. Green was also second among defensemen in the plus/minus category with a +39 rating, scoring 10 PPG and logging 25 minutes of ice-time per game. With those sorts of numbers, he should have a few people taking another (even a third) look at him when casting their vote. 
The Blackhawks have themselves a real franchise defenseman in Duncan Keith and he deservedly gets a Norris Trophy nod, based not only on his scoring, but his defensive presence on the ice (not to mention the look of him in any line-up on paper). Keith finished second among all defensemen in scoring with 69 points (14 goals & 55 assists) in all 82 games for the Blackhawks, ranked second among defensemen in average ice-time per game with 26:35, had a +21 rating and was tops among nominees in takeaways with 44. 
There is no denying that Los Angeles Kings sophomore Drew Doughty has talent. The kid has oodles of talent and has no problem showing it off in front of his California fans. Doughty finished 3rd among defensemen in scoring this season with 59 points (16 goals and 43 assists) in 82 games and was 11th among defensemen in plus/minus with a +20 rating. The bigges pluses for Doughty this season is that he did all of this on an up-and-coming team like the Kings and this is his second season in the NHL, where a lot of players tend to struggle. This nomination is really a projection of how good he is yet to become in the league.The Norris Trophy should be going to the best all-around defenseman in the league, which to me, would give my vote to Duncan Keith. Green is very offensive on a very offensive team, which kind of skews the numbers a bit, in my opinion, while Doughty is still very young and hasn't developed into the most dominating defenseman of the bunch, but that isn't to say he isn't close. Keith does it all for the Blackhawks and I think his time has come, stealing another trophy away from Green and his monster numbers.
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