I still have heard absolutely nothing to suggest why Couturier should be considered a front runner. I would love to ask anyone who voted for Coutrier at #1 a simple question: why? If you think "Oh no, he was good this year, that was a fine pick." Again, I'll ask you why? Did you just hear that he was good this year and are just going along with it, or did you actually bother to look into it at all why he was getting so much attention?
I've been heavily involved in looking into all of this and debating with people, and the responses are literally always the same in the sense that they feel he's due for an award, and that this wasn't his best season and he should have won it before. Malkin in 2012 is one of the most commonly referenced arguments, it's actually kind of hilarious. People aren't even trying to hide the fact that it's because they think he's "due". Could you imagine supporting Bergeron because of losing to Toews by a tiny margin in 2013 or winning the Cup in 2011 or something? You never have to do that with Bergeron because he always earns his spot by merit. Bergeron has been a finalist and lost a record 5 times and has been top 5 and lost a record 7 times. Does any of that matter to this year's vote? Ideally you would think no. The past is irrelevant, everyone should be making their own case every year.
Couturier's the guy this year that you hear is supposed to win it so you just vote for him. The sheer number of 1st place votes in a situation like this was absurd, just backs how much this was like a campaign and how narrative driven it was. I already know that player will be Stone next year. This isn't a day and age where people should just resort to lazy narratives, there's actual things you can look into now to have an informed opinion.
I can't stress this enough though, even outside of Bergeron, Couturier is just a straight up bad pick this year. If you only care about shot suppression, O'Reilly is the winner. If you only care about on-ice goal numbers, Cirelli is the winner. If you only care about microstats, Bergeron is the winner. Couturier doesn't even balance all of these 3 things the best, it's just a truly bizarre pick. Regardless of whichever number or metric you want to look at, literally the only one that supports Couturier winning is faceoff percentage when he takes 400+ fewer draws than the other candidates.
Base Stats
Of the 6 main candidates, these are their ranks in the very surface level stats/advanced stats (these are the quick reference stats uninformed voters will glance at before making their decision):
| Stat | Bergeron | Couturier | O'Reilly | Cirelli | Danault | Stone |
|---|
| Points | 4th (2nd Pts/G) | 3rd | 2nd | 6th | 5th | 1st |
| Goals | 1st | 2nd | 6th | 4th | 5th | 3rd |
| Plus Minus | 2nd | 3rd | 6th | 1st | 4th | 5th |
| Faceoff % | 2nd | 1st | 3rd | 5th | 4th | NA |
| CA60 | 3rd | 2nd | 1st | 5th | 4th | 6th |
| CF% | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 1st | 2nd |
| FA60 | 2nd | 3rd | 1st | 6th | 4th | 5th |
| FF% | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 2nd | 1st |
| SA60 | 1st | 4th | 2nd | 6th | 3rd | 5th |
| S% | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 1st | 2nd |
| xGA60 | 1st | 6th | 4th | 2nd | 3rd | 5th |
| xGF% | 3rd | 4th | 6th | 5th | 2nd | 1st |
| GA60 | 4th | 3rd | 2nd | 1st | 5th | 6th |
| GF% | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 1st | 5th | 6th |
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So what here screams Couturier? Faceoff % when he takes 400+ fewer draws than O'Reilly/Bergeron/Danault? Do you think it's a coincidence that people only talk about Corsi with Couturier? If so much thought was put into that, the choice would be O'Reilly.
Effect of Zone Starts
Zone starts get referenced a lot but if you cared so much about that, you would give it to someone like Blueger or Bonino, who keep their head above water in shot attempts despite having a ton of D-zone draws.
Not to mention it's a lazy way to look at things, I've actually looked into how much of an effect it has:
I looked at 2016/17 results on puckbase for zone draws that have a shot attempt for or against 10 seconds after the draw. Research finds that that's when most shots occur:
Here were the top 120 centers (by D-zone draws taken) divided into segments of 30, and looking at how many shot attempts occur against them by dzone draw, along with their average faceoff percentages:
| D-Zone Faceoffs Taken | Average Faceoff % | Shot Attempts Against Within 10 Seconds Per 100 D-Zone Draws |
|---|
| Centers 1-30 | 53.40% | 24.9 |
| Centers 31-60 | 49.80% | 26.4 |
| Centers 61-90 | 49.60% | 27.4 |
| Centers 91-120 | 46.90% | 27.6 |
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If we want to look at a specific example of extremes to look at influence on shot suppression, we can look at Koivu vs. Tavares:
While Koivu took the most defensive zone draws at 493, he also took 265 offensive zone draws. 149 shot attempts against were attributed to his D-Zone starts, and 89 shot attempts were attributed to his offensive zone starts. On the opposite end of the spectrum, John Tavares took 497 offensive zone draws to just 273 defensive zone draws. 130 shot attempts were attributed to his offensive zone starts, and 63 shot attempts against were attributed to his defensive zone starts.
When we remove these zone starts from the equation, Koivu with a 35% O-Zone start percentage has his CF% climb from 49.63% to 51.26% (+1.63%) and Tavares with a 64.5% O-Zone start %) has his CF% drop 53.15% to 51.86% (-1.29%). If however, we extrapolate their shot generation numbers and give them 50% O-Zone starts (Koivu goes from 89-149 to 127-115, and Tavares goes from 130-63 to 101-89 based on their shot generation rates), Koivu’s CF% goes from 49.63% to 51.4% (+1.77%), and Tavares goes from 53.15% to 51.97% (-1.18%).
So even at the opposite end of the spectrum for centers for utilization, we’re only dealing with about a 1-2% difference in their overall shot generation rates due to their zone starts. And for a center like Koivu who had such a large portion of his shot attempts for and against attributed to faceoffs, only 238 of his 2,023 shot attempts (11.8%) can be attributed to the 10 seconds following his 758 defensive or offensive zone faceoffs (which represents 11.2% of his ice time). This certainly represents a portion of his shot suppression and generation numbers, but is a relatively small part of the whole.
If we want to look at a specific player who has a league average faceoff percentage and allowed a league average shot attempts against per defensive zone draw, we can look at Bonino:
| Situation | Faceoff Win (160 total) | Faceoff Loss (161 total) |
| % of Sequences with 0 Shot Attempts Against Within 10 Seconds | 94.4% | 58.4% |
| % of Sequences With 1 Shot Attempt Against Within 10 Seconds | 5.0% | 37.9% |
| % of Sequences With 2 Shot Attempts Against Within 10 Seconds | 0.6% | 3.7% |
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Bringing this to Couturier and Bergeron, Couturier is often on the ice with someone who is historically good at D-zone draws in Giroux, you can see the effect faceoff percentage has on shot attempts against above. It's going to make that difference in shot attempts against relatively small in comparison. You can see the difference it has on a mid 60 % guy to a mid 30% guy, the difference between the two is much smaller than that.
Competition
For all the Corsi RAPM stuff I see out there, all you need to know is this:
Microstats
This is the big thing to me, Bergeron always stands out head and shoulders above everyone for this.
If we look at per TOI rates for all the Selke and Norris Candidates in terms of microstats:
| Player | Blocked Passes/15 |
| Bergeron | 6.44 |
| Slavin | 5.74 |
| Carlson | 5.70 |
| Zibanejad | 5.45 |
| Koivu | 5.14 |
| Letang | 5.02 |
| Danault | 4.95 |
| O'Reilly | 4.82 |
| Brodin | 4.80 |
| Provorov | 4.74 |
| Couturier | 4.59 |
| Lowry | 4.52 |
| Barkov | 4.51 |
| Stepan | 4.31 |
| Hischier | 4.27 |
| Krejci | 4.20 |
| Hertl | 4.15 |
| Backstrom | 4.08 |
| Matthews | 3.90 |
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| Player | Puck Battles Won/15 |
| Bergeron | 5.94 |
| Danault | 5.81 |
| Couturier | 5.66 |
| Kopitar | 5.66 |
| Barkov | 5.55 |
| Lowry | 5.50 |
| Hertl | 5.38 |
| O'Reilly | 5.13 |
| Hischier | 5.06 |
| Koivu | 4.89 |
| Cirelli | 4.82 |
| Zibanejad | 4.70 |
| Backstrom | 4.63 |
| Matthews | 3.90 |
| Slavin | 3.11 |
| Pietrangelo | 2.90 |
| Parayko | 2.42 |
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| Player | D-Zone Loose Pucks Recovered/15 |
| Bergeron | 9.90 |
| Zibanejad | 8.87 |
| Lowry | 8.79 |
| Kopitar | 8.53 |
| Stepan | 8.40 |
| Koivu | 8.36 |
| Hertl | 8.18 |
| Cirelli | 7.40 |
| Krejci | 6.89 |
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| Player | Stick Checks/15 |
| Barkov | 2.20 |
| Slavin | 1.99 |
| Danault | 1.94 |
| Koivu | 1.93 |
| McAvoy | 1.77 |
| Hischier | 1.69 |
| Cirelli | 1.68 |
| Parayko | 1.64 |
| Matthews | 1.45 |
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And if you want to look at Couturier's strongest attribute (puck battles), Koivu was the only forward to win puck battles at a higher rate than Bergeron this year:
If you want to go back to 2017/18, it was the same thing. I didn't mind that year or 2019 so much though considering it was a much more sizable amount of time missed.
I've already posted the eye test video enough.
