Breaking down the top candidates for the Selke Trophy
We're about halfway through the NHL season at this point, and as such it feels like the right time to take a look at the current leaders for the league's various awards.
Over the next several articles, we'll examine the 10 leading candidates for each of the major awards. Today, we'll look at the Selke Trophy, given to the best 200-foot forward in the NHL.
The problem with projecting this award is that it is persistently the one most untethered from the actual results of a season. The guys who are among the best defensive forwards in the league usually figure into the mix, of course, and in recent years the winners have tended to be at least mostly deserving. But there's almost always the odd reputational pick, or a guy who had three good games on national TV, and I don't want to put any players or voters on blast right now, but there were some truly baffling final results and individual votes in last year's Selke balloting, giving nods to shutdown centers who had relatively small offensive impacts or were actually quite poor defensively. Point is, it's hard for me to say the 10 guys on my list are getting real consideration from voters because I truly don't know what half these people are looking at most of the time. Let's just try to do our best.
Let's take a look at the 10 most likely candidates (presented in alphabetical order):
Aleksander Barkov, C, Florida Panthers
I feel like I don't really need to explain this. Barkov is widely considered the best 200-foot player in the league and most games, it's hard to argue with that assessment. Is he having his best year? Not really, but he's been "only" great once again, and you're comparing to a handful of "elite" seasons. You'd like to see him score a little more, maybe, and the fact that he missed 10 games won't do him any favors. But he'll get a bunch of votes and he'll deserve them. I do wonder how many of them will be of the first-place variety, but if anyone can come on strong in the second half, it's this guy.
It must be said, though, that they don't really give this award to the same guy two years in a row unless it's Patrice Bergeron — the only other guys to do it in the cap era are Pavel Datsyuk and Rod Brind'Amour, and those feel like ancient history — so I'm not sure voters are super-willing to put Barkov on that level, especially given all the other stuff I just mentioned. He wouldn't not-deserve it, but this just kinda doesn't feel like the year for him to be a repeat winner.
Anthony Cirelli, C, Tampa Bay Lightning
Cirelli is running at close to a point a game and the Lightning are scoring north of 60 percent of the 5-on-5 goals when he's on the ice. The underlying numbers show this is by no means outsized success, or at least, not the kind that will lead to brutal regression in the second half. In fact, through 34 games, Cirelli's 60.5-percent goals-for share is actually a few points under his expected-goals number. If you've been “unlucky” to only score 60 percent of the goals, that's crazy.
That plus Tampa not really missing a beat after what was perceived as a tough offseason could be a boon for his candidacy.
Joel Eriksson Ek, C, Minnesota Wild
Eriksson Ek missed almost a month in December and hasn't really been as impactful on the PK as he usually is, but he's been top-10 in Selke voting in each of the last four seasons and he's been lights out at 5-on-5. We're talking 70 percent of the goals and all his other underlyings are in the 55-57 percent range.
Like a couple other candidates on this list, the games-played thing might be a factor, and also might not. You'd like to see him score a little more — he came in at 64 points last year and is on pace for only about 40-45 this season if he plays every game the rest of the way — but being The Shutdown Guy on a team playing as well as Minnesota and his reputation preceding him kinda nudges him ahead of Marcus Foligno (who's having a better defensive season but even slower scoring) on that team for me.
Nico Hichier, C, New Jersey Devils
I don't know that you can really make the argument Hischier has been particularly effective on the PK in particular. New Jersey has been outscored 15-1 when he's killing penalties, which is not elite at all. But he's a very good 5-on-5 defender who was second in Selke voting two years ago (when the Devils were great) and still 19th last year (when the Devils were quite bad).
So he has the earned rep as a really good defensive player, who is scoring goals at the highest rate of his career as his team returns to form.
Taken as a whole, he's an extremely good player, maybe close to elite if we're talking about 200-foot guys, but he's not necessarily having his best season. If he gets serious consideration, it's reputation-based, which is fine, but he's not close to a top-five guy for me right now.
Anze Kopitar, C, Los Angeles Kings
It's weird that Kopitar didn't get any first-place votes for this award last season, but he still ended up fifth in voting, behind three other guys on this list and one who definitely won't be appearing on it. He's not really a PK guy any more, which is fine, but when he does get out there down a man, he's been solid if unspectacular. The same is true at 5-on-5, but LA is around 67 percent of the goals in that game state, outscoring opponents 31-15 through 38 games. That's among the best goal differences for a heavily used forward in the league, and while his underlying numbers are mostly on the wrong side of 50 percent, a lot of the other guys ahead of him don't have the underlying numbers to support anything close to that level of goal difference, either. That is to say, even if Kopitar's goal difference comes back to earth a bit, he could still be in the running.
This might be a one-more-for-the-road kind of nomination, but Kopitar in the top 10 feels like a mortal lock because he's still quite good defensively and on pace to clear a point a game for the first time since 2017-18 when he… won the Selke. Just some connections I'm drawing.
Brad Marchand, LW, Boston Bruins
The Bruins aren't having their best season, but Marchand is having a nice little year for himself at age 36, scoring at a solid clip, and doing some of the best penalty killing in the league. He's not on Boston's top unit, but other teams have only scored four goals in 52ish minutes when he's been out there, and that's a really strong rate. There are zero forwards with 500-plus minutes at 5-on-5 who have fewer goals against per 60 than Marchand both at full strength (2.2) and on the PK (4.52). He's 51st in the former and 17th in the latter, and if he's where those streams cross plus he puts up another 50ish points, you can see the argument that he should be on the top 10.
Again, this is a reputational award and Marchand has gotten Selke votes in eight of the last nine seasons (his only year off was 2022-23, for some reason). The way things are going, I can see him getting a serious look.
Except he plays the wing, so maybe not.
Auston Matthews, C, Toronto Maple Leafs
I wonder how much the games-played factor is going to affect Matthews' candidacy for this and other awards, but the fact is that he's a good 5-on-5 and an elite penalty killer, plus one of the most lethal goalscorers of all time on a per-game basis. He just feels like he's gonna be in the Selke conversation for most of the rest of his career, which is fine by me. You can't tell me there are too many players better than Matthews in every zone.
That said, this is a bit of a down year for him at full strength, at least by his lofty standards, so that plus the time missed due to injury (which might have been hampering his play anyway) might hold him back from true contention right now.
Sean Monahan, C, Columbus Blue Jackets
Some quick stats on Monahan: Third on Columbus in scoring, close to a point a game. First on Columbus in PK minutes, close to 69 (they really spread that shorthanded ice time around). Tied with Jack Eichel for second in the league in 5-on-5 goal difference, behind only his linemate. And 29th in the league in 5-on-5 xGF%, close to 59 percent. What's not to like here?
Hugely positive offensive numbers, decent defensive numbers, and if you're looking for a Columbus MVP, I'd lean more for Monahan than Zach Werenski, who's been getting a lot of love lately. The fact that he's continuing his career rejuvenation under the most miserable of off-ice circumstances imaginable for his club makes this such an easy story to tell, and him an easy guy to vote for. The way things are going right now, he deserves to be there if we're saying it's a 200-foot award and not a defensive-forward award (a distinction some voters seem to struggle with). What a year.
Sam Reinhart, C, Florida Panthers
Reinhart is a guy who would probably get more love if not for Barkov, because he's a great defensive center who also happened to almost score 60 goals last season. He ended 2023-24 fourth in Selke voting, so is now officially On Voters' Radars, and is on pace for another 40-plus goals and 90-plus points. Add in voter fatigue, missed games, and a slightly lower production for Barkov, and suddenly Reinhart looks like he could be in the top three very easily.
I feel like I'm selling him short a little bit here, so just talking about goals above replacement among all forwards with at least 20 minutes of PK time, Reinhart is 10th in offensive impact, seventh in defensive impact, and seventh overall. Oh, and he leads the league in shorthanded goals, which probably matters more to voters than it should.
The way things have gone so far this season, and are likely to progress in the second half, Reinhart deserves to be at or near the top of every voter's list.
Tom Wilson, RW, Washington Capitals
One of the things you have to say about the Selke is that if you don't put up 50ish points, the voters just aren't gonna give you the award. The lowest-scoring Selke winner of the cap era in an 82-game season had 53 points, and it was Bergeron's fourth, back in 2016-17.
That's all preamble for a real hear-me-out pick with Wilson. He's only a little ahead of that era-low pace (aiming for 60ish points), but he's been really good at 5-on-5 and even better on the second PK unit. The coaches are using him in the exact right way, he's only taking a moderate amount of penalties (34 PIM through 40 games), and almost everything has gone right for his team.
A lot of the above also applies to Aliaksei Protas, who happens to be Washington's second leading scorer, but a huge amount of this award is still narrative-driven, and there's a straightforward story to tell about the guy who turned into a Selke-adjacent forward who helped fuel a team's surprising turnaround in his age-30 season. Plus, Protas hasn't been as effective all 200 feet at 5-on-5 as Wilson.
Selke trophy midseason ranking
With all of the above having been said, here's how I would rank the 10 players listed here in terms of likelihood to win the Selke, based on both performance to this point and the odds they continue or improve on their current situations in the second half:
- Sam Reinhart
- Sean Monahan
- Anthony Cirelli
- Auston Matthews
- Aleksander Barkov
- Anze Kopitar
- Joel Eriksson Ek
- Tom Wilson
- Brad Marchand
- Nico Hischier