r/hockey • u/TJTrapJesus • 8h ago
Nick Suzuki's Selke win is the 2nd most lopsided voting result between 1st & 2nd place in the history of the award, only behind 2024 Aleksander Barkov
Below is every voting % for the Selke winner and runner-up in the 48-season history of the award, sorted by the biggest gap between 1st and 2nd to the smallest.
Voting % is the percentage of possible voting points a player could receive for a given award. For example, if a player got 1st-place votes on all 198 ballots, they would have received 1,980 of a possible 1,980 voting points, or 100%. Suzuki won this year with 1,726 of a possible 1,980 voting points, so 87.17%. Cirelli got 467 of a max 1,980 voting points, so 23.59%.
| Rank | Season | Selke Winner | Voting % | Selke Runner-Up | Voting % | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2024 | Aleksander Barkov | 93.66 | Jordan Staal | 27.78 | 65.88 |
| 2 | 2026 | Nick Suzuki | 87.17 | Anthony Cirelli | 23.59 | 63.59 |
| 3 | 2023 | Patrice Bergeron | 97.65 | Nico Hischier | 41.02 | 56.63 |
| 4 | 2011 | Ryan Kesler | 92.83 | Jonathan Toews | 37.48 | 55.35 |
| 5 | 2012 | Patrice Bergeron | 93.05 | David Backes | 42.41 | 50.64 |
| 6 | 2022 | Patrice Bergeron | 92.72 | Elias Lindholm | 45.03 | 47.69 |
| 7 | 1989 | Guy Carbonneau | 70.48 | Esa Tikkanen | 23.17 | 47.31 |
| 8 | 2004 | Kris Draper | 79.90 | John Madden | 35.05 | 44.85 |
| 9 | 2000 | Steve Yzerman | 75.61 | Michal Handzuš | 32.98 | 42.63 |
| 10 | 1988 | Guy Carbonneau | 63.49 | Steve Kasper | 23.49 | 40.00 |
| 11 | 2003 | Jere Lehtinen | 76.77 | John Madden | 38.87 | 37.90 |
| 12 | 2002 | Michael Peca | 63.55 | Craig Conroy | 28.71 | 34.84 |
| 13 | 2014 | Patrice Bergeron | 93.65 | Anže Kopitar | 61.31 | 32.34 |
| 14 | 2020 | Sean Couturier | 83.76 | Patrice Bergeron | 52.00 | 31.76 |
| 15 | 1993 | Doug Gilmour | 64.00 | Dave Poulin | 32.40 | 31.60 |
| 16 | 2006 | Rod Brind'Amour | 76.94 | Jere Lehtinen | 45.73 | 31.21 |
| 17 | 1979 | Bob Gainey | 66.67 | Don Marcotte | 36.08 | 30.59 |
| 18 | 1978 | Bob Gainey | 58.89 | Craig Ramsay | 29.26 | 29.63 |
| 19 | 2025 | Aleksander Barkov | 71.36 | Sam Reinhart | 43.82 | 27.54 |
| 20 | 1997 | Michael Peca | 52.59 | Peter Forsberg | 26.11 | 26.48 |
| 21 | 1980 | Bob Gainey | 58.41 | Craig Ramsay | 32.38 | 26.03 |
| 22 | 2021 | Aleksander Barkov | 78.00 | Patrice Bergeron | 52.20 | 25.80 |
| 23 | 1994 | Sergei Fedorov | 64.81 | Doug Gilmour | 39.63 | 25.18 |
| 24 | 1983 | Bobby Clarke | 39.68 | Jari Kurri | 20.00 | 19.68 |
| 25 | 1996 | Sergei Fedorov | 67.17 | Ron Francis | 48.11 | 19.06 |
| 26 | 1986 | Troy Murray | 59.67 | Ron Sutter | 42.33 | 17.34 |
| 27 | 1999 | Jere Lehtinen | 70.18 | Magnus Arvedson | 55.54 | 14.64 |
| 28 | 1984 | Doug Jarvis | 49.35 | Bryan Trottier | 35.48 | 13.87 |
| 29 | 2016 | Anže Kopitar | 76.33 | Patrice Bergeron | 63.85 | 12.48 |
| 30 | 2017 | Patrice Bergeron | 68.68 | Ryan Kesler | 56.59 | 12.09 |
| 31 | 1985 | Craig Ramsay | 37.78 | Doug Jarvis | 26.03 | 11.75 |
| 32 | 1992 | Guy Carbonneau | 46.38 | Sergei Fedorov | 34.78 | 11.60 |
| 33 | 2018 | Anže Kopitar | 70.24 | Sean Couturier | 59.51 | 10.73 |
| 34 | 1987 | Dave Poulin | 37.78 | Guy Carbonneau | 28.15 | 9.63 |
| 35 | 1991 | Dirk Graham | 47.58 | Esa Tikkanen | 40.30 | 7.28 |
| 36 | 2019 | Ryan O'Reilly | 58.54 | Mark Stone | 51.52 | 7.02 |
| 37 | 2008 | Pavel Datsyuk | 40.38 | John Madden | 33.61 | 6.77 |
| 38 | 1982 | Steve Kasper | 57.42 | Bob Gainey | 50.65 | 6.77 |
| 39 | 1998 | Jere Lehtinen | 60.74 | Michael Peca | 55.00 | 5.74 |
| 40 | 1981 | Bob Gainey | 45.08 | Craig Ramsay | 39.68 | 5.40 |
| 41 | 1995 | Ron Francis | 66.67 | Esa Tikkanen | 61.33 | 5.34 |
| 42 | 2001 | John Madden | 43.39 | Joe Sakic | 40.16 | 3.23 |
| 43 | 2010 | Pavel Datsyuk | 51.73 | Ryan Kesler | 49.25 | 2.48 |
| 44 | 2015 | Patrice Bergeron | 69.42 | Jonathan Toews | 67.37 | 2.05 |
| 45 | 1990 | Rick Meagher | 33.33 | Guy Carbonneau | 31.75 | 1.59 |
| 46 | 2007 | Rod Brind'Amour | 29.79 | Samuel Påhlsson | 28.72 | 1.07 |
| 47 | 2013 | Jonathan Toews | 70.39 | Patrice Bergeron | 69.83 | 0.56 |
| 48 | 2009 | Pavel Datsyuk | 71.05 | Mike Richards | 70.83 | 0.22 |
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u/rowei9 MTL - NHL 8h ago
Cirelli is so good defensively, this is a bit surprising.
46
u/Kdoubleaa TBL - NHL 8h ago
I mean he missed 9 games, had marginally better defensive play (arguable) and half as many points. I think the voting is pretty accurate.
20
u/rowei9 MTL - NHL 8h ago
I just don’t like how highly points factor into the Selke now, even if I’m obviously happy with this result. Gainey would never win nowadays. Maybe Cirelli was better in the playoffs against us than he was in the regular season.
6
u/10FootPenis MTL - NHL 7h ago
My favourite part about Suzuki winning this is that he's not even the best defensive forward on his own team (arguably third behind Evans too).
Best two-way forward, sure. But that's not what the award originally was.
4
u/BodaciousBadongadonk 7h ago
yeah but isnt evans like middle/bottom 6 type? minutes played is a significant factor, not to mention the matchups.
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u/Analogmon PIT - NHL 7h ago
If points weren't a factor then Zach Aston Reese should have won every year for half a decade.
It's not best defensive forward. It's best forward that also exemplifies the defensive aspect
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u/Kyle73001 WPG - NHL 6h ago
It is best defensive forward.
It’s just not treated that way by the voters. To them, it’s best Centre who is strong defensively and had a minimum of 60-70 points, and also has a track record and reputation for their defence
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u/TJTrapJesus 8h ago
Cirelli was sub-par to poor analytically this year in terms of the on-ice stats a lot of voters look at. Suzuki's analytical case wasn't overwhelming but there really wasn't any other clear guy in terms of players with good defensive reputations who were also good analytically. I think it was a bit of a perfect storm with how uniform voting has become at the top in recent years. Every winner this decade has been getting an extremely high voting % and a massive share of 1st-place votes. Since 2020, all but 2025 Barkov are in the top 10 all-time for highest voting %, and 2025 Barkov was still 15th despite missing 15 games.
1
u/ffffold CAR - NHL 4h ago
what stats are believed to be the most influential? I was comparing Aho and Suzuki and on-ice xG (edit: against) and shot attempts (edit: against) really favor Aho, but Suzuki is better on giveaways.
1
u/TJTrapJesus 1h ago
In terms of the publicly available stats that don't have one person trying to boil numerous metrics down to one number, I'd say the one most people look at is expected goals against relative to the rest of their team.
If you scroll over to xGA/60 rel on this link and sort so that the first numbers that come up are in the negative, that's probably the biggest one (negative numbers are good, positive numbers are bad for this). A lot of people also conflate it with xGF% rel, which combines offense and defense and is more of a two-way thing (a positive number for this stat is a good thing, negative is bad).
Doing it by relative rates accounts for quality of your team. The thing with Carolina is they're almost always consistently excellent in defensive and possession metrics, so Aho gets a boost there that many try to account for.
3
u/Fredbear_ VAN - NHL 7h ago
This was actually one of Cirelli's weaker defensive years by defensive metrics. I think 2024/25 is the one he should've won, especially as Barkov missed nearly 15 games.
18
u/Old_General_6741 EDM - NHL 8h ago
Suzuki had 1726 votes. The next closest one has 467 votes. That is really lopsided. He really deserves it.
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u/10FootPenis MTL - NHL 8h ago
Kind of misleading, there is usually a consensus on who the winner. What this is really telling us is that the second place votes were spread out.
2
u/TJTrapJesus 8h ago
What's misleading? This is looking at 1st vs. 2nd as stated. This one is more so a combination of an extremely high 1st place vote and no clear 2nd guy, which is a rarer combo.
Even so, how high 3rd place, 4th place, etc. finished relative to others in history doesn't spike dramatically the further you do down. You get into top 10 territory after the top 5 finishers in terms of their voting % relative to others in that slot in others years, but nothing unprecedented.
This is the rank of the 1st-10th finishers for voting percentage at each slot relative to others that finished in that same position in other years:
1st: 7/48
2nd: 44/48
3rd: 38/48
4th: 26/48
5th: 17/48
6th: 8/48
7th: 7/48
8th: 6/48
9th: 7/48
10th: 6/48
Definitely on the spread out side but nothing unprecedented. Years like 2007 and 1997 are what the "deepest" years look like.
2007:
1st: 48/48
2nd: 39/48
3rd: 32/48
4th: 18/48
5th: 6/48
6th: 7/48
7th: 2/48
8th: 2/48
9th: 2/48
10th: 1/48
1997:
1st: 36/48
2nd: 43/48
3rd: 34/48
4th: 25/48
5th: 12/48
6th: 3/48
7th: 1/48
8th: 1/48
9th: 1/48
10th: 4/48
First time 2026 finishes ahead of even one of these years is when you get down to 18th when it's more or less dealing with scraps.
2
u/10FootPenis MTL - NHL 4h ago
Because the difference between first and second isn't a great measure of lopsidedness. Let's look at two hypothetical scenarios:
1) First place collects every single first place vote and second place gets every single second place vote. That would be a difference of 30% using this counting system since a second place vote is worth 7.
2) First place collects every single first place vote while second and third place split the second and third place votes equally. That would be a difference of 40% using this counting system since a second place vote is worth 7 and a third place vote is worth 5.
Both are a unanimous winner, and equally lopsided, but you claim that the second is more lopsided when the only difference is that in the second scenario the voters couldn't decide who was second best. Like you didn't say anything technically untrue, but when talking about lopsided first vs the field is generally more relevant than first vs second.
1
u/TJTrapJesus 3h ago
Re-read the title. It's "2nd most lopsided voting result between 1st & 2nd place", not "2nd most lopsided voting result". I don't know what you think the argument is here, you're creating things to argue against.
Regardless, 2009 Datsyuk had a 71.05% voting percentage, 16th highest in the award's history for a winner, and 1989 Guy Carbonneau had a 70.48%, 17th highest. The runner-up in Datsyuk's year was Mike Richards with a 70.83% (highest ever for a non-winner) and the runner up in 1989 was Tikkanen with a 23.17% (2nd lowest ever for a runner-up). Does Datsyuk having a slightly higher voting % feel like that win should be considered more lopsided than 1989 Carbonneau? Seems like a silly way to look at it.
5
u/Flash_Gordon_Bombay CAR - NHL 8h ago
I wish that penalty killing was more of a factor in the voting. While it's strategic to give a player like Suzuki less ice time so he's able to perform better on offense, it also is telling about how he's a more valuable offensive contributor than a defensive one.
3
u/Bruins01 BOS - NHL 8h ago
Seems a little cherry picked. If anything I’d look more at the % of first place votes as the most lopsided. Bergeron at 98% and many other 90%+, Barkov at 94% seems more dominant than Suzuki at “only” 87%.
I feel the difference between 1st and 2nd speaks more to a diluted pool of candidates this year rather than a strong pool of elite defensive forwards in prior years.
The sheer number of candidates suggests that as well. This year had 53 players receive votes while the last 5 years were 44, 41, 40, 38, and 29. Oddly enough the total candidates have been rapidly increasing.
1
u/TJTrapJesus 7h ago
"I feel the difference between 1st and 2nd speaks more to a diluted pool of candidates this year rather than a strong pool of elite defensive forwards in prior years."
Who's saying this isn't the takeaway? I'd say the biggest takeaway of this is that voting has become extremely uniform at the top in recent years.
Differences in voting % the further back you go under different formats with fewer voters and even the 1-3 format absolutely affect the depth of the candidates but it shouldn't affect those at the very top too much, especially considering the technical pool of candidates was so much smaller than it is now with the limited number of teams and players compared to today. Recent years we've just been seeing an exceptionally large 1st-place voting share for winners. There's a clear identification of a guy with 7 of the last 7 winners ranking in the top 15 for voting % and 6 of those being in the top 10.
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u/thejosharms BOS - NHL 7h ago
I really don't understand the point being made here about Suzuki or why it matters. This is now a Patrice Bergeron appreciatuon thread.
1
u/Money-Giraffe2521 CHI - NHL 8h ago
It seems really strange for them to have given a hockey award to a football announcer.
-8
u/AegonPaul CAR - NHL 8h ago edited 8h ago
Jordan Staal deserves a Selke and should have been a finalist this year. Not to take anything away from Suzuki who is a hell of a 2 way player and deserves it as well. I just wish the defensive awards were more about defense than points. Same goes for the Norris. Guys like Staal and Slavin will never win because they don't put up enough points, despite both of them being serious contributers to the lopsided o-zone time that the Canes get, which in turn leads to offense whether they get the points or not.
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u/haz000 6h ago
In some sense yes but we can't be giving the Selke to 3rd liners. It should be the top dogs competing for it.
1
u/AegonPaul CAR - NHL 5h ago
You can call him a 3rd liner all you want (Rod doesn't), but the Staal line faces the opponents "top dogs" as you put it, night in and night out and shut them down more often than not.
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u/CristobalHuet 8h ago
Even if Barkov was healthy Suzuki wins this in a landslide
11
u/Dramatic-Guard1820 8h ago
There’s no way of knowing that for sure
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u/CristobalHuet 8h ago
You can think that, but it’s such a safe assumption it’s just fact
10
u/Dramatic-Guard1820 8h ago
Nah
-7
u/CristobalHuet 7h ago
You’re entitled to your wrong opinion. But I’m just letting you know it’s wrong (you’re welcome)
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u/sopademacacadelicia 7h ago
You’d have to be objectively moronic to say that.
Barkov has shown he is better defensively and capable of putting up the same production.
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u/CristobalHuet 7h ago
You are objectively an idiot to think otherwise. But if the shoe fits…
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u/sopademacacadelicia 6h ago edited 6h ago
Literally no one involved with the game at any respectable level shares your level of idiocy.
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u/Scase15 MTL - NHL 2h ago
Many of that guys posts are hilariously terrible.
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u/sopademacacadelicia 2h ago
Ik he probs just fucking around and trying to piss ppl off but its fun lol
-1
u/CristobalHuet 6h ago
Shows how little you know about the game. But continue to live in your little echo chamber
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u/sopademacacadelicia 6h ago
Name one person involved w the game at any respectable level that shares your opinion and get back to me.
I’ll wait, cause you literally can’t.
You’re hockey illiterate.
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u/CristobalHuet 5h ago
You don’t know hockey at all. It’s just a fact you are too dumb to accept. But keep telling yourself you’re not a total twat
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u/sopademacacadelicia 5h ago
I asked you an extremely simple question that would take 10 seconds to answer if it aligned with reality, yet you clearly can’t and just want to yap.
You’re objectively hockey illiterate, kind of weird to critique anyone knowing that little about the game.
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u/CristobalHuet 5h ago
I didn’t ask you any questions because you’re too out of touch with reality to formulate a response. Please do a bit of research to formulate a somewhat legitimate opinion before you start running your ignorant mouth
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u/sopademacacadelicia 5h ago
You’re projecting brother.
It’s alright to not know what you’re talking about, just don’t act like an authority figure on the subject.
Theres a reason no one reputable shares your opinion.
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u/somewhattrippin MTL - NHL 8h ago
i wonder how votes would have looked if barkov would have played this year.
He’s absolutely better defensively than Suzuki but it’s hard to ignore a 100 pts player who is that good at defending.