Most important statistics for Selke Trophy

[alko]

Found some articles, that could be used as starting points:

Article 1

Article 2

Article 3

 

[Bmessy]

Reputation because there are no stats to define defense

 

[Iceman]

Least amount of penalties taken.

 

[DKH]

Bergeron games played

70 games it’s his

 

[PatriceBergeronFan]

Agreed, although the statkeeping for it is still too subjective right now. They did a great job revamping how hits were tabulated in the past 5 years, now I'm hoping they do the same because takeaways is a stat that, yknow, actually matters.

Anyways, it was a travesty that Mark Stone hasn't even had a nomination yet, the man is the living embodiment of taking the puck from the opponent.

I've read here over the years two different views - Stone is an amazing defensive force because of his takeaways, and Stone is not a good defensive player despite the takeaways.

I do genuinely wonder which it is.

 

[Intangibos]

Selke trophy is the worst award in the league in regards to how it's awarded.

The Frank J. Selke Trophy is awarded annually to the National Hockey League forward who demonstrates the most skill in the defensive component of the game.

In reality it's awarded to the best two-way player, and by best it is extremely subjective and has a ton of bias. Not that other trophies do, but this one is spectacular. Datsyuk and Kesler for example were both elite two-way guys that were great at both ends of the rink. However, in 2010/2011 was Malhotra not the best defensive forward in the league?

The Selke is awarded based on giveaways/takeaways, PK effectiveness, points, and just general reputation. Think of all the major sports writers around the league. What are your opinions of them? I would wager the vast majority of posters here think a ton of the sports writers are absolutely clueless. These are people who ranked Toews ahead of Crosby and in the top 100 players of all time. Yikes.

Somehow not recognizing elite defensive play and tunneling on two-way guys who put up points and play the PK is pretty sad. These guys should be the ones who can explain why these players are so effective despite not putting up points to fans who may not be interested in spending an entire game watching a defensive specialist closely to see how good he is at shutting down scoring threats. Low event players are very easy to go unnoticed unless you watch and those are the types of players journalists should talk about, and low event players just so happen to be the best defensive players in the game.



I believe you could have elite defensive players who are black holes offensively to play against top lines and eat up PK time who are absolute bargains rather than spending a million extra or even more to get 10-15 more points out of guys who are likely less effective defensively anyway. I don't care if a player puts up next to no points if he plays against very good players and just ends almost every shift in the offensive zone. 20GF/30GA or 0GF/10GA is the same thing, aside from the entertainment factor for the fans which is actually relevant as I would rather an exciting team with 1st round exits than a boring team with deeper runs. I would take the boring team for a single cup to bring it to Vancouver because I'm a fan and my parents deserve one before they go, but give me a single cup with an exciting team over a boring dynasty any day.

If you can have a decent goal differential with a $3m line against a $15m line you're absolutely crushing the matchup regardless of how many points you score as the object of the game for your team to have 1 more goal than your opponent at the end of the game. To be clear it doesn't even have to be a positive differential, you just need the money you save on them to be spent elsewhere to improve your goal differential elsewhere. their $6m shutdown line breaking even with your $15m line compared to your $3m shutdown line -10 against their $15m line while you gain +15 elsewhere with that $3m is one of those things that puts one elite team over the top in a playoff series against other elite teams. The modern NHL is very much about cap management for GMs and if you can effectively shut down their scoring allocated cap spending for less than they do yours in regards to cap efficiency, as long as you're not an idiot who can't acquire/sign your higher end players for a reasonable price you're laughing.

On the Canucks board I'm constantly arguing about Gaunce vs Beagle. Beagle is definitely a better player than Gaunce, but scoring 12 more points for 4x the price without an upgrade in defensive play is ridiculous. That $2.25m should be spent elsewhere for maximum efficiency and it really adds up when you consider you have 3 4th liners that you could be saving money on to use specialists instead.

It's a shame. I think if the Selke were actually awarded to the best defensive specialist forward it would be great for those players and get them some of the recognition they deserve. I very much respect defensive specialists and think they have a place on NHL teams, but are constantly overlooked both by the media and even GMs. They don't get the respect from the media, they don't get the love from the fans, they don't get the highlight reel plays, and they don't get the money. In spite of that they're some of the hardest working players in the game trying to keep their spot in the NHL and it would be nice if they had a chance at their name on an award at the end of the season to look forward to.

To be fair I do think it would be hard to determine who gets the award. I wouldn't even mind if the award could be given to multiple players. If a 4th line who spends the majority of their ice time together on shutting down top lines they could receive the award together similar to how goalies can share the Jennings. However, how do you gauge matchups? How do you gauge deployment? What about how good your goaltender is? Are you playing with a Willie Mitchell or are you out there with Aaron Rome? For all my bitching and whining above I wouldn't want to be the one to outline the criteria for a purely defense-based forward-play award.

I've read here over the years two different views - Stone is an amazing defensive force because of his takeaways, and Stone is not a good defensive player despite the takeaways.

I do genuinely wonder which it is.

You could argue that players that drive possession are the best defensive players in the game since you can't get scored on when you have the puck, except for some embarrassing moments, but in those years Crosby and the Sedins were absolutely dominant in terms of puck possession, but obviously didn't play the PK. I don't think it's a good argument, but given the trophy already goes to the two-way guys rather than defensive specialists you may as well just give it to whomever has the best goal differential, or at least the best goal differential who are great penalty killers.

When the Canucks traded Bonino for Sutter there was quite a bit of argument about defensive play. Sutter was the better "defensive" player, yet Bonino spent more time in the offensive zone. Why is the better defensive player seemingly spending more time in his own zone? If Sutter was a bargain player who spent more time in his zone it would be one thing as players who score more points generally cost more, but he isn't. As I said above, for all my whining I have no idea how you could actually assess defensive play in a vacuum as there are just so many other factors at play. There is a lot of judgment involved that is bound to be flawed, but even so I think the media does an absolutely terrible job of making those judgments.

 

[koyvoo]

A winger has no business winning the selke ever

Jere Lehtinen, 3x Selke winner is one of the most deserving at least contested winners ever.

 

[Yackiberg8]

Bergeron will win if he’s healthy the rest of the way, Mark Stone also a good candidate.

Still can’t believe the majority on here seem to support Alex Barkov. Impossible to make a case for him this year.

 

[MartinS82]

Not saying he deserves it, but Crosby is gonna get a lot of love this year. He is PKing, Face off % is over 55 and is second highest foward in +/-. He got votes when he was an above average defensive player...as one of his biggest fans I almost hope he doesn't win. The outrage.

Regarding takeaways, it's not really a good stat to use. Some players "fish" for pucks, always going for the strip/steal. These players may get a "takeaway" every game or two, but more often than not they are beat and out of position. Defense is more subtle than that: give me the guy that is constantly angling players onto their backhand, forcing bad passes, shutting down passing lanes, tying up sticks, and forechecking then backchecking.

 

[Royale With Cheese]

Criteria:

1. Your name is Patrice Bergeron.

 

[Il Stugotz]

The best 2nd tier center award

 

[GIN ANTONIC]

Not sure you know how rhyming works...

Yeah, that one really made me shake my head.

Could mean Marion Hossa, but he's Slovakian and wore #81

 

[trentmccleary]

Before 1998, it seemed like the 3rd liner +/- award.
After TOI came out in 1998, it was the SH TOI award.
Then giveaway and takeaway stats came out and Datsyuk won a bunch in a row, making it seem like the takeaway award.
Now. Who knows? Maybe it is the advanced stats award or maybe they combine the previously held stats together.

 

[ccman68]

Mark Stone has been by far the best defensive forward this season. Too bad the award is a joke.

 

[Super Hans]

The eye test award

This is the primary criteria. However, the sportswriters don't have have the time to watch a large body of work of every defensive forward, so they talk amongst each other and it becomes a reputation thing.

That being said, Bergeron is definitely the best of this generation and deserves a nomination every year he plays the majority of the season.

 

[traparatus]

The most accurately given award in NHL. It embraces all fundamental components of defense.

1. Best defense is a good offense.
2. No matter how good your offense is sometimes you have play defense.
3. If you are really the best, you should be able to demonstrate that season after season.

Least controversial of all awards.

 

[ABCUser]

I think we have to throw Mitch Marner into this conversation. Obviously he's killing it on the offensive side but he's actually been better on the defensive side. He's one of the best back checkers I've seen since Backstrome.

 

[alko]

Now. Who knows? Maybe it is the advanced stats award or maybe they combine the previously held stats together.

Someone should ask all the sportswriters, that can vote (i think there is some list online) what are the criteria.

 

[JetsFan815]

Here a heuristic I consider useful, it includes using a variety of stats:

All of the points below refer to 5 on 5. I do not consider PK as an important enough factor in this process.

• Take the list of all forwards that have played that season and remove any that have played less than 500 minutes
• Then remove all forwards that averaged less than 12.5 min/gm TOI (sort of a rough proxy to get rid of players being sheltered or otherwise not playing top competition)
• Then remove all forwards with less than 51.5 % CF and xGF% (this will be rough for players on bad teams but thems the breaks) and 50% GF%. At this point you should have around ~50 players still in play
  
• Remove all players with a Penalty differential worse than -5
• Then remove all players with RelT CF% and RelT xGF% worse than 1. And also remove any players with a positive RelT xGA/60

At his point you will end up with like 15-30 players and you will some human judgment, weigh variables differently, add positional bias and consider other extraneous facts to decide your winner.

For example applying the process I described above to the 17-18 season results in the following players left at the end for Selke contention

I am sure you could do this process more rigorously by assigning to weights to all the variables I mentioned and doing filtering on some aggregated number derived from those variables but this is just a heuristic that is quick and fast and imo yields reasonable results. Other than a couple of weird names in there (like Tyler Bozak, Andrew Ladd) it sounds like a reasonable list of "finalists" to make your decision based off of.

 

[alko]

Here a heuristic I consider useful, it includes using a variety of stats:

All of the points below refer to 5 on 5. I do not consider PK as an important enough factor in this process.

• Take the list of all forwards that have played that season and remove any that have played less than 500 minutes
• Then remove all forwards that averaged less than 12.5 min/gm TOI (sort of a rough proxy to get rid of players being sheltered or otherwise not playing top competition)
• Then remove all forwards with less than 51.5 % CF and xGF% (this will be rough for players on bad teams but thems the breaks) and 50% GF%. At this point you should have around ~50 players still in play
  
• Remove all players with a Penalty differential worse than -5
• Then remove all players with RelT CF% and RelT xGF% worse than 1. And also remove any players with a positive RelT xGA/60

At his point you will end up with like 15-30 players and you will some human judgment, weigh variables differently, add positional bias and consider other extraneous facts to decide your winner.

For example applying the process I described above to the 17-18 season results in the following players left at the end for Selke contention

I am sure you could do this process more rigorously by assigning to weights to all the variables I mentioned and doing filtering on some aggregated number derived from those variables but this is just a heuristic that is quick and fast and imo yields reasonable results. Other than a couple of weird names in there (like Tyler Bozak, Andrew Ladd) it sounds like a reasonable list of "finalists" to make your decision based off of.

Sweet. But where is Bergeron?

 

[alko]

The two most important :

1) The number of times you have been nominated for the award
2) The player's reputation around the league.

No joke, the Selke trophy is all about reputation.

Where comes this reputation? Who create "defensive monster" that is every year regarded as one of the best defensive forwards?

 

[Emerz]

Note: these guidelines weren't created by me, all credit is too /u/andontheslittedsheet

Rule 1: Be a Center

• 10/10 Selke winners post-2007 are centers; 6/9 pre-2007 are centers
• 30/30 Selke finalists post-2007 are centers; 20/27 pre-2007 are centers

This is a little deceiving because 5/7 of the non-center nominees, and all 3 winners, are Jere Lehtinen. The other exceptions are Magnus Arvedson (1999) and Jay Pandolfo (2007). So they didn’t really nominate wingers too much more readily, it’s just that Lehtinen was that good. Craig Conroy in 1998, John Madden in 2001, Henrik Zetterberg in 2008, and David Backes in 2012 were all listed as wingers in those seasons on hockey-reference, but all took 900+ FO, so I counted them as centers. If you feel otherwise, then 28/30 winners and 18/27 nominees were centers.

Rule 2: Score at least 50 points

• 10/10 Selke winners post-2007 have 50+ points; 5/9 pre-2007 have 50+ points
• 28/30 Selke finalists post-2007 have 50+ points; 11/27 pre-2007 have 50+ points

This one really isn’t even close: points matter more now than they used to. You can argue the threshold should be lower given the (somewhat) lower scoring of the “dead puck era”, but even if you use 40 points, then it’s 8/9 (Madden in 2001) and 22/27, which is better but still different enough. Even in 2007, a higher scoring year than many of the recent years, Pahlsson and Pandolfo were nominated with 26 and 27 points. Similarly to post-2007, only 3/9 winners have outscored their co-finalists: Lehtinen (with only 48 points) in 2003 and Brind’Amour in 06 and 07. Sakic scored 118 points and finished 2nd in 2001, very narrowly missing out on being only the 2nd player next to Fedorov to win the Hart and Selke in the same season.

Rule 3: Take a lot of faceoffs. Win a lot of faceoffs

• 10/10 Selke winners post-2007 have 53%+ FO%; 4/9 Selke winners pre-2007 have 53%+ FO%
• 26/30 Selke finalists post-2007 have 53%+ FO%; 7/27 Selke finalists pre-2007 have 53% FO%

This is another category that isn’t really even close...FO% matters far more than it used to. The people at 53%+ were Yzerman in 00 (winner, 56.8%), Sakic in 01 (2nd, 53%), Conroy in 02 (2nd, 54.3%), Draper in 04 (winner, 56.9%), Madden in 04 (2nd, 53.3%), and Brind’Amour in 06/07 (winner, 59.1% and 59.2%). All of the wingers took < 50 FO, and all of them had very poor percentages (< 30%). So obviously Lehtinen won 3x with terrible percentages, but even among centers, Madden won in 2001 with only 46.6%. In 1999 and 2003 all 3 finalists had FO% below 51%. So FO% isn’t the strongest indicator pre-2007. However, unless you were a winger, taking a lot of faceoffs has always been a strong indicator. Other than Datysuk one year, pretty much every nominee has taken > 800 FO. 4/9 winners pre-2007 outdrew their fellow finalists, vs. 7/10 winners post-2007. So it seems the magnitude of FO% has also possibly taken on a higher importance than in prior years.

Rule 4: Spend a lot of time killing penalties

• 9/10 Selke winners post-2007 have 1:30+ SH TOI/GP; 9/9 Selke winners pre-2007 have 1:30+ SH TOI/GP
• 24/30 Selke finalists post-2007 have 1:30+ SH TOI/GP; 27/27 Selke winners pre-2007 have 1:30+ SH TOI/GP

Again, this is quite different pre- and post-2007. In fact, there are no players pre-2007 that are less than 2:00 SH TOI/GP; there are 13 below that post-2007. Interestingly enough, Lehtinen actually had amongst the lowest PK minutes of the decade for his first two wins. 1:30 really isn’t that high; 111 forwards qualified for that last year, which is almost 4 per team. This says some about what’s changed in the award over the years, but also some about player usage in general. Killing penalties has always been pretty important for the Selke, but it’s pretty well established that older players played far more TOI overall than current players. Fun tangential fact: I believe Ray Bourque actually has the official record for highest career TOI/GP, even though it only started being recorded when he was like 38 years old. Iirc Bure holds the forward record by a lot.
For example, Chara led the league by a mile this year in SH TOI/GP at 3:46, with Hyman the highest forward at 2:47. Brind’Amour and Pahlsson in 06 and 07 were well above 4:00...as forwards! So this probably warrants a better breakdown, maybe by percentile in a given year, rather than just a specific threshold (e.g. 1:30) to make it more applicable across eras. But it’s pretty clear that killing penalties is usually very important. You could be an even-strength beast but if you only rarely kill penalties, you have no shot.

Rule 5: Have strong possession +/- numbers

Again, I’ll be using +/- instead of Fenwick here (look at the other post for that), and a threshold of 10.

• 9/10 Selke winners post-2007 have at least 10 +/-; 7/9 Selke winners pre-2007 have at least 10 +/-
• 23/30 Selke finalists post-2007 have at least 10 +/-; 20/27 Selke finalists pre-2007 have at least 10 +/-

I realize this isn’t the best proxy for possession stats, but wasn’t sure what else could apply across eras. However, you’ll see it’s fairly consistent across both, unlike some of the other “rules”. In fact Ryan Kesler is responsible for 4 of the post-2007, with Madden and Brind’Amour as other multiple culprits. But I think this is where the “reputation” part may come in: with the exception of Brind’Amour in 06/07, who was 35+ years old and is a bit of an outlier in many ways, there have been no first-time winners with “low” +/-. For example, yes Bergeron won with only +2 in 2015, but had already won it twice and had built up the reputation...the first time he won or was even nominated, he led the NHL in +/-. Kesler is frequently nominated but only actually won once, in 2011 when he put up 40 goals and was +24. Etc. Only three finalists have had negative +/-: Pahlsson and Pandolfo in 2007, and Kopitar in 2015. This is of course despite the fact that there are likely many good defensive players on “bad” teams, playing difficult minutes, that are negative through little fault of their own. Generally speaking, the average +/- for a group of finalists is pretty high (I can display the actual numbers if people are interested, but it’s a little busy). So like many of these other “rules”, it’s probably better applied as a threshold: minus players, however good they may be, are very unlikely to win or even be nominated.

Rule 6: Be on a Top 10 defensive team (in GAA)

• 9/10 Selke winners post-2007 have been on a top-10 GA team; 6/9 Selke winners pre-2007 have been on a top-10 GA team
• 22/30 Selke finalists post-2007 have been on a top-10 GA team; 19/27 Selke finalists pre-2007 have been on a top-10 GA team

I think this has ties to Rule 5. I’d personally argue for the primacy of Rule 5 though; the numbers are similar to Rule 6 but slightly better. +/- has been used as some indicator of individual defensive/two-way play for a long time, even though it has issues. Having a good team GAA is of course one of the big factors causing a player to have a high +/-. There are also some years like 2002, where all nominees were on teams 18th in GAA or worse, but all +19 or better. That seems difficult to explain from Rule 6 alone, although there are always outliers.
But you can argue also that some voters might normally just pick out good defensive teams, say “well obviously Player X being good defensively is a huge part of why their team allows so few goals,” and then follow the other rules. So who knows. Since there haven’t historically been many useful defensive metrics, this plus the eye test could be definitely be seen as a viable alternative option for some voters. This is a bit “chicken-or-the-egg” as to whether good defensive players are making the team GA low, or whether a strong defensive system (Hitchcock, Sutter, etc.) is responsible for players’ +/-, Fenwick, etc.

Winners/Finalists with these criteria
Since there are obviously a lot of exceptions listed above, here are the number of criteria met for the winners and number met for all three finalists combined by year. I’ll use Fenwick over +/- in the years it is available, and only a “plus player” threshold instead of +10. The “better” options are either co-finalists with a higher number of criteria met, or other players in the league that year that hit all 6/6 categories (unfortunately it would take a while to find all the guys with 5/6 or less).

Year	Winner	Winner Criteria	Finalist Criteria	”Better” Options?
1998	Lehtinen	3/6	10/18	Peca 4/6; Modano 6/6, Gilmour 6/6, Barnes 6/6, Yzerman 6/6, Oates 6/6
1999	Lehtinen	4/6	11/18	Lindros 6/6, Brind’Amour 6/6, Yzerman 6/6, Primeau 6/6
2000	Yzerman	6/6	14/18	Oates 6/6, Fedorov 6/6
2001	Madden	4/6	15/18	Sakic 6/6, Modano 5/6; Sundin 6/6, Fedorov 6/6, Yzerman 6/6
2002	Peca	4/6	11/18	Conroy 5/6
2003	Lehtinen	3/6	11/18	Madden 4/6, Walz 4/6; Fedorov 6/6, Sundin 6/6
2004	Draper	5/6	13/18	Yzerman 6/6
2006	Brind’Amour	4/6	11/18	none (Drury close but a minus player)
2007	Brind’Amour	4/6	9/18	Datsyuk 6/6
2008	Datsyuk	6/6	16/18	Zetterberg 6/6
2009	Datsyuk	5/6	13/18	Zajac 6/6, Pavelski 6/6
2010	Datsyuk	5/6	13/18	Toews 6/6, Bergeron 6/6
2011	Kesler	6/6	15/18	Bergeron 6/6, Pavelski 6/6
2012	Bergeron	6/6	16/18	Kopitar 6/6, Pavelski 6/6
2013	Toews	5/6	16/18	Bergeron 6/6, Datsyuk 6/6; Kopitar 6/6
2014	Bergeron	6/6	17/18	Kopitar 6/6; Pavelski 6/6
2015	Bergeron	5/6	15/18	Toews 5/6, Kopitar 5/6
2016	Kopitar	6/6	17/18	Kesler 6/6
2017	Bergeron	6/6	16/18	none (Koivu/Kesler miss on Fenwick)

[TBODY] [/TBODY]
[TBODY] [/TBODY]

 

[Midnight Judges]

Not saying he deserves it, but Crosby is gonna get a lot of love this year. He is PKing...

lol he's averaging 27 seconds a game.

18 minutes total on the season after 40 games - that's good for 5th most among centers on the Penguins.

386 players in the NHL have put in more PK time than Crosby. Bizarre that anyone could think that was some sort of strength.

 

[Rubi]

The actual vote in itself is a very complicated ptocess. Each PWHA member has to nominate 5 players and rank them 1 through 5.

Thirty-one players received Selke consideration. Kopitar won the award for the second time in three years after earning nearly twice as many first-place votes as runner-up Sean Couturier. Four-time Selke winner Patrice Bergeron finished third, which crazily enough is his worst finish in the Selke race since 2011. Offensive superstars like Crosby, McDavid, Hall, Giroux, John Tavares, Mark Scheilele and Vladimir Tarasenko also received votes for the defensive forward award, as did oft-unheralded role players like Colton Sissons and Zach Hyman.
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PHWA@ThePHWA
Voting for the Frank J. Selke Trophy by members of the PHWA:
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6:12 PM - Jun 20, 2018​

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• Complete voter breakdown of Selke Trophy

 

[alko]

Rule 4: Spend a lot of time killing penalties

Hm, that doesnt reflect the reality by Pavel Dacjuk. He was not much used in PK. Again, look here.