So basically your MO is: ignore all narratives and write your own.
Yzerman won Selke over Sakic, 39 points or not.
A Selke Trophy is not the lone arbiter of two-way performance. I’ll take 118 points, the league-leading plus-minus, and a 2nd-place Selke finish to a legitimate defensive forward like John Madden
as a peak two-way season over 79 points, twenty plus-minus beneath a teammate, and a Selke win over Michal Handzus in a year when people were arbitrarily putting Blues on ballots because so many marquee players missed time.
Honestly, if Sakic - already having more points and a better plus-minus than Yzerman despite playing just 60 games - plays even just 5-10 more games scattered throughout the 2000 season without even adding to his already superior numbers, maybe the media builds up a narrative around him instead. Given that they nearly handed him a Selke the following season despite Colorado’s PK getting worse, I don’t think it’s a stretch.
Yzerman got 155 points, which Sakic never sniffed.
Is 155 points in 1989 necessarily better than 118 points in 2001? I mean, if Yzerman has 155 points in 2000 - or 155 points while winning a Selke - it would probably mean more than this fact that lacks context.
Fact: I can leapfrog Shaq. I just haven’t given you the context that he’s standing in a 3-foot hole I dug and covered with sticks. That’s basically what 1998-2004 was: a Heffalump trap for offense.
1st AST is a 1st AST. These are, as they call them, facts.
Sakic has three of them, but I wouldn’t say that a 3:1 ratio necessarily means anything, even if it is, as they call them, a fact. Because it’s still a fact derived from the collection of opinions.
It is a
fact that those specific voters
selected Yzerman as the best Center in 2000 but it is an
opinion to say he
was that.
It is a
fact that Sakic outscored Yzerman and had a higher plus-minus despite playing just 60 games in 2000, and it is my
opinion that he was a better Center and better two-way player that season while understanding why a voter would be inclined to select Yzerman for both as he was healthy and had never won either to that point.
He’s Al Pacino winning an Oscar for “Scent of a Woman” in 1992 instead of when he was killing it from 1972-1975; you want Yzerman to win because it seems like it should have already happened.
And despite your insistence that a 1st Team is a 1st Team, it is my opinion that the 2000 1st Team All-Star selection (or Sakic’s 2002 for that matter) is worth a lot less than the 2001 1st Team All-Star selection Sakic received or the 1989 1st Team All-Star selection Yzerman didn’t receive... or the 1989 2nd Team selection Yzerman didn’t receive... or the 1989 3rd Team selection Yzerman would have received if that was a thing. The idea that a 1st Team is a 1st Team is so preposterous that I have to let out a hearty laugh.
Ha.
...it, uh, didn’t translate well in text, but was hearty indeed!