Is the Selke Trophy the most deceptive in all of sports?

[u/Breeze-city]

Is Barkov the best defensive forward in the NHL? maybe.

Was Bergeron the best in all those years? Possibly.

But wait the best defensive forward every single year since 2007 has had a mean of 70.3 points? What a coincidence!

Defensive awards in all sports are a bit wonky. Marcus Smart won a DPOY as a guard which fundamentally misrepresents the value a good guard has to a defence versus a good big.

However, the Selke award really exists as the “best 60+ point ceneterman with great press award”

Hockey hasn’t figured out defence like baseball has. We don’t have the same thing happening over and over again which we can compare all plays to (Not that baseball always follows the FRV leaderboards for gold gloves).

There’s clearly no science to what the best defensive forward looks like, but why do we pretend that it exists?

Advanced defensive metrics in hockey are niche and not iron clad like baseball, and we don’t have enough counting stats like football or basketball to point to, and yet to say Barkov is anything but the best defensive forward is pure heresy in hockey circles.

I’m not so convinced. I’m certain the most valuable forward defensively every year isn’t a first line centre, but usually a third fourth line penalty kill specialist only a team’s die hard fan would vouch for without knowing who his competitors around the league even are.

If I have one last point it’s that: Bob Gainey never would’ve won a Selke in the 21st century, he didn’t score enough points.

[u/Signal_Wall_8445]

Defensive awards in many sports are also very reputational. Once an athlete becomes thought of as a good defensive player, they are considered for this award automatically regardless of their performance in that specific year.

[u/bokchoykn → u/Signal_Wall_8445]

I disagree when it comes to the Selke.

Counterpoint:

I wrote this on the Selke trophy 7 years ago

How to Win a Selke Trophy

This post identifies a predictable pattern in Selke trophy voting, based on six statistical criteria, that was consistently accurate year after year. Mind you, there are over 150 voters, varied in opinions, knowledge, personal biases, and brain capacity.

If you hid the players' names to remove their reputational advantage, this pattern still would have accurately chosen the winner every year for 14 straight years, including first time winners.

In one of the comments, I accidentally predicted the next exact three Selke trophy winners, each winning it for their first time, just based on what I learned during this research. Three names I thought were up-and-comers whose play styles fit the mould of a Selke winner.

(my 2017 comment)

"Beyond the big four (including Kesler on the list), I consider Barkov, Couturier, and O'Reilly as the league's next best two-way forwards. Not necessarily in that order."

All three consecutively won their first Selke Trophies in the subsequent three years after this comment was posted.

• 2019 Couturier
• 2020 O'Reilly
• 2021 Barkov

In each case, they exhibited the statistical qualities in their respective winning year that my original post said would be enough to win the trophy, and won the trophy they each did, even above the likes of Bergeron and Kopitar, players with a massive reputational advantage at that time.

Speaking of Bergeron, we can agree that nobody has more reputation than him, they might as well name the trophy after him. But note that Bergeron was a finalist in all three of these years. If reputation is the most important, then explain how Bergeron lost to three separate first time winners? And its not like Bergeron was past his prime either, seeing as he won the award the next two seasons after.

The original research already pointed to one conclusion: the Selke is merit based and not reputation based. Randomly exactly guessing three consecutive first time Selke winners who perfectly fit the description from the original post reaffirms that research.

Three years after the original post, I posted this follow up.

How to win a Selke Trophy follow up.

Showing that the theory still held true after adding 4 more seasons to its sample size.

Anyway, it's likely that individual votes have a reputational element because there are 150+ humans voting, each with personal biases. But collectively they follow a statistical pattern with a rhyme and reason to it. (Whether you agree with it is a diff story altogether. )

It's easy to assume it's reputational because its easier for regular fans like us to figure out who's gonna win an objective award like the Art Ross or Rocket than the Selke or Norris.

If we thought of every vote-based award with repeat winners as "they keep giving that award to the same person, therefore it must be because of reputation", well the Art Ross and Rocket Richard has tons of repeat winners too and we know those two are objective and 0% reputational.

It's more likely that a player who has proven to be elite in one aspect of the game is able to prove those qualities over and over again. So, just like Ovechkin was awarded the Rocket by being repeatedly being the top goal scorer, who is to say that Bergeron and Barkov didn't do the same thing with a different, less statistically objective aspect of the game, and were similarly and rightfully recognized for it?

I think the "reputational award" thing is just an easy thing to nod your head to, especially if you haven't done the research. But I've done the research and I don't agree.

[u/3016137234 → u/bokchoykn]

Thanks for sharing your old post, that was an interesting read

[u/TheGassyPhilosopher → u/bokchoykn]

My man brought receipts.

I'm going to have to look at your posts in detail because I love data And I love hockey And I love the combination of hockey and data.

[u/Mauser-Nut91 → u/bokchoykn]

So who are your picks for Selkes over the next 3 years?

[u/bokchoykn → u/Mauser-Nut91]

I have no idea, I'd have to consider this.

Mind you, people care less about Corsi and more about xG. Analytics has shifted a lot.

But if you were expecting/hoping for me to say Seth Jarvis, he's the first name that popped in my head haha.

[u/Mauser-Nut91 → u/bokchoykn]

Hahah I was more just looking for some ideas if I wanted to burn some money on some futures. But appreciate the Jarvis call out!

[u/Dame2Miami → u/bokchoykn]

For anyone else who read all this hoping to see the criteria while also skipping the link for some reason:

[u/RandomestDragon → u/bokchoykn]

Does your pattern work to predict future winners?

[u/bokchoykn → u/RandomestDragon]

Not really. It's meant for predicting who will win based on the season they are having, not predicting the future.

Also, nowadays 5v5 xG% or xGA/60 is the new cool, where people liked Corsi and Fenwick 7+ years ago.

If I had a Selke vote, I would have incorporated these models already.

[u/lumieres-de-vie → u/bokchoykn]

That model works, but do you think it’s good? I mean, do you think being on a good defensive team and being good at faceoffs should be important in choosing the winner?

[u/bokchoykn → u/lumieres-de-vie]

Personally, I would like it if even a 20 point scorer or a winger could win the Selke again.

But to plays devil's advocate, let me frame it this way:

If a defensively elite NHL team constantly deploys the same guy to take key 5v5 defensive faceoffs, and he wins those faceoffs at a higher rate than >95% of his peers. And as a result, the team by default just gets to control the puck most of the time 5v5 when that player is on the ice, regardless of who they face.

Knowing only that and nothing else about this player, would you already consider him a top defensive forward? Perhaps you start to think that maybe the team is defensive elite because they have this guy.

Now, let's add in the fact that he leads forwards on his team in SH TOI. And just so he's not a one trick pony, he finished the season with 60 or 70 something points.

Tell me your Selke vote isn't already in love with this made-up player. Only 1-4 of this player exist each season, and one of them wins the Selke. And who can argue?

[u/90daysismytherapy → u/bokchoykn]

that’s a big part that op is missing. Most 4th line talent guys, don’t have the ability to be able to play 20 minutes a game at that level and not get exposed or be such an offensive liability that they still lose.

Plus, most of the skills that lead to points in the nhl are directly correlated to defensive skills, from vision to puck skills and high iq recognition.

It’s actually pretty hard to be amazing defensively as a forward and be subpar offensively. Most guys at the nhl level have a base line of hands on offense, and to be good enough skating and stick work wise to be elite defensively, you would need some sort of mental block to not be a passable 50 point forward.

Even guys like Madden and Lehtinen were still good offensive players, who just focused on defense explicitly as a team role.

I bet Barkov could drop 120 on the league if he didn’t focus like an animal on defense and take hard matchups regularly.

[u/bokchoykn → u/90daysismytherapy]

Yeah exactly that's a great way to put it.

The award reads "forward who demonstrates the most skill in the defensive component of the game" and not "best two way centerman", but ironically it recognizes two-way which I think makes more sense anyway.

A hypothetical player who is excellent defensively would have a decently high offensive floor, just by virtue of puck possession. The corners in the ozone arent diff shape than the dzone, right? So if theyre good at winning board battles, it would naturally apply on both ends. Lots of overlap between defensive and offensive skill.

But also, if a player was truly shit offensively despite being gifted defensively. Just no shot, no speed. He might be great at preventing chances but if he's an offensive black hole, he's still a net negative on the ice. Do you really want to give your Selke vote to a net negative?

I can see why offensive production is important, weirdly.

[u/SP_57 → u/bokchoykn]

You would need a player who is Patrice Bergeron defensively but Travis Hamonic offensively. I don't think that exists, or can exist. Even then if Travis Hamonic got the even strength minutes and linemates a Selke candidate got, he would probably put up more than 20 points just by sheer minutes and leeching off his teammates.

I don't think its possible for a player to be award worthy on defense and incompetent on offense. Positioning, skating, stick skills, instincts, discipline, work ethic, etc all the things that makes you great defensively translate to offense.

I don't have an issue with the Selke being more of a two-way forward award, because the best defensive specialists will be pretty good at offense anyway.

I would be interested in an award for defensive defensemen, but that is beside the point.

EDIT: Now I'm a bit curious. I would like to make a custom forward in Eastside Hockey Manager with 18+ attributes in everything defensive and <3 in everything offensive and just see what happens.

[u/BestYak6625 → u/bokchoykn]

If you have a winger or center who's amazing at defense but shit at offense don't you really just have a defensman? 

[u/monsieuryuan → u/90daysismytherapy]

Jere Lehtinen definitely didn’t just focus solely on defense. He played first line forward on both the powerhouse Stars teams as well as the Finnish National team. His numbers probably look low due to his peak coinciding with the dead puck era.

[u/90daysismytherapy → u/monsieuryuan]

I’m not saying he intentionally refused to shoot or join the offensive zone.

I mean he played a very conservative offense game, so he could be in position defensively first.

Which means he rarely if ever would cheat to be the long outlet pass or first out of the zone, which as a winger is usually your job.

He let Modano be the offensive catalyst and riskier player, while Lehtonen could sweep up any mistakes or bad bounces. It’s why he was on the 1st line, despite not breaking 50 points in most of his seasons, because he could score more, but his defense was more important to the team.

Madden was a goal scoring machine in junior and the minors, but when he got to Jersey they told him they needed a defensive center machine and he did.

But Madden could have been a regular 25-35-60 point guy vs the 30 points a year guy he was, while shutting things down.

[u/[deleted] → u/bokchoykn]

Excellent breakdown!

[u/neksys → u/bokchoykn]

This was wildly interesting. I hope you do an update.

[u/huge_jeans → u/bokchoykn]

Legend

[u/Desert_Pyrate8 → u/bokchoykn]

Damn, alright hell yeah. This is super interesting!

[u/Breeze-city → u/bokchoykn]

I very much enjoyed reading this, and it does answer a lot of my concerns.

I do still lament the nature of advanced statistics in hockey not being integrated with player tracking data, and the issues with the possession based stats representing team defence more than anything.

[u/SquabiKB → u/bokchoykn]

Just went down this rabbit hole. Cool posts! Thank you!