2018 Selke Winner - Anze Kopitar

[Regal]

I've been following the NHL for a long time and you and I both know that things change. I don't really care what kind of player won the award 30 years ago and I don't really know why you think that's relevant today. The days of players winning purely based on defense are over. Keep hanging on to the past to make a point.


I never said 3rd line shutdown centers are being ignored, I was saying the days of those kind of players getting recognition are over. There's a reason why Couturier finished 2nd this year and his highest previous finish was 8th though this probably wasn't Couturier's most impressive season from a purely defensive standpoint. Then you look at guys like Kesler who have been around forever. He's been a Selke Finalist 5 times in his 13 year career. Is it just a coincidence that the 5 times he was a finalist were also his 5 highest scoring seasons, in order? His Selke win was his best offensive season, his two 2nd place finishes were his 2nd and 3rd best offensive seasons and his two 3rd place finishes were his 4th and 5th best offensive seasons. Any time he's been under 50 points he hasn't been a finalist. I highly doubt he just forgot how to play good defense those years. Kopitar won it this year with 92 points and and 2 years ago with 74 points. last year he barely got any votes and finished 15th while scoring 52 points. Did he take the year off from defense? my point is, the award specifically since the lockout, has been purely the best two-way player. People need to get used to that and stop pretending like offense doesn't matter.

There's a correlation between offense and Selke finishes but this doesn't mean voters actually use offense as a way to compare players when they vote. The more likely scenario is that offense gets attention and people tend to project the idea of players playing well offensively onto other aspects of their game. If Kopitar puts up 52 points, people are going to be talking about how "Kopitar is having a poor season", and that gets projected onto his defense even if he isn't having a poor defensive season. Then the reverse happens when he scores 92. So offense has an impact on the voter's opinions, but it's more in terms of a subconscious influence based on overall play. This doesn't mean voters would compare Kopitar to Couturier and say "Well, I thought Couturier was better defensively this year, but not enough to make up for Kopitar's better offensive game". I very much doubt the majority of voters take offense into account in this way

 

[jason1919spezza]

The Selke award is for the player who displays the best defensive skill over a season, not who's the best defensive player.

Was it not you who said that being healthy is a talent? You've spent years saying that Crosby can't be the best, because his missed games work against him. Why the sudden change? Bergeron only played 64 games

Which is true in a way lol. People on this forum talks his “so-called peak” as if it’s an accomplishment, but the reality is that he failed to stay healthy during most of that period. He became healthy again because the commissioner and the league made the game softer (or faster lol...for people that wants to damage control it), and his GP clearly refelects this. It’s not like he magically found a way to stay healthy lol.

I won’t blame the league for being rigged though...sports is business after all, and Crosby is that “poster boy” whether people like him or not. Him not being able to play is a huge hit for marketing the game of hockey, especially the fact that NHL is a weak professional league compared to NFL, NBA, MLB. Hell, even professional soccer is said to surpass the NHL in terms of popularity lol.

By the way, people should give the player an extra credit for “missing games” when one is involved in some kind of political/racial/systematic problem which is out of their control. For baseball I’m talking about guys like Jackie Robinson (racial problem), Joe DiMaggio (missing games due to war), and Ichiro (not being able to come over from Japan). In NHL, it should only be guys from Europe in general, who couldn’t play at an earlier age due to Cold War politics. For example, guys like Hasek and Stastny.
Crosby’s inability to stay healthy during his peak is a part of who he is as a player. And it’s a massive negative since “peak” is important when one determines a player’s overall career.

He is still one of the best players in the game, but majority of the people on this forum never questions his status and almost gives him unanimous #1 or #2 every year without much consideration. It’s pretty obvious that quite a portion of the hfboards nowadays are pens/Crosby fanatics (just look at all these ridiculous threads related to penguins or Crosby/Malkin, and all the salty threads when Capitals/Ovechkin won the Cup), but it’s sometimes funny how hard people tries to damage control Crosby lol.

Anyways back to Bergeron. He is kind of similar to Crosby as well, in the sense that most people on hfboards gives him the unanimous “free pass” for all the praise. In case of this season, Kopitar should have won it, and he did, so I’m happy with the result. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Bergeron wins a Selke next season though. I’m against Bergeron being an unanimous Selke Finalist year in and year out, but there is no denying that he is one of the best defensive forwards in the game today.

 

[Dough72]

the best defensive forward is the guy who just flips the puck in on offence and makes sure he is never, ever, caught out of position. And when he's not flipping in pucks and hanging around the neutral zone, he is killing penalties like nobody else. Not sure who that guy is but he gets ripped off every single year with this award.