Moops
Registered User
- Jan 22, 2015
- 677
- 0
Lets ease up on those rains shall we.
No particular order:
Datysuk
Gainey
Lehtinen
Possibly Clarke (Even though he never won the award)
Carbonneau
It's hard to compare Bergeron to past defensive forwards, since modern stats have changed Selke voting. It's hard to quantify how good Sainey actually was. But Bergeron is clearly the best of his generation--Datsyuk belonging to a previous generation, and frankly Bergeron is so dominant today that I'm not convinced Datsyuk is any better. When you consider that defensive play tends to correlate with offensive output, Bergeron has a leg up on everyone *except* Datsyuk in that regard.
Bergeron absolutely has a case from greatest defensive forward of all time--at the very least he has a chance to end up with the greatest Selke voting record of all time. I'm assuming he'll probably win this year. He needs:
A 2nd+3rd+4th+9th to match Guy Carbonneau
Roughly the same results to match Jere Lehtinen & overtake Datsyuk
1st + 2nd a couple of top tens to match Gainey.
Basically if he bags four more nominations and wins the trophy one more time, he'll have a resume up there with the greatest defensive forwards ever. It's also not out of the question that he hits some stupid round number like 1,000 points to put him over the top in terms of HHOF consideration. He's not even 30 yet, so for all we know he could bag seven trophies before he's done. He absolutely has a case.