Selke Trophy Candidates

This is another tough decision for the trophy case. The most defensive forward would be best considered as keeping the puck out of his own team's net, while reamining efficient as an all-round forward.

John Madden is a previous winner of the Selke in 2001 and is generally considered one of the better defensively sound forwards in the game and can generally score 20 goals a season for the Devils. He carries with him a good faceoff winning percentage, but it only ranks third to his two counterparts at 53.7%. He was only a +1 for the Devils, while racking up 43 points in 80 games. Looking back in years to come, his name won't necessarily be out of place, but this season, his numbers do lack compared to the other two.

Considered more of an offensive threat, he is rounding out to be one of the premier two-way forwards in the league. Henrik Zetterberg is getting his first nomination for the trophy and it is deserved. Zetterberg does pretty much everything for the Red Wings... 5-on-5, power play and penalty kill. He takes a fair number of faceoffs and wins the majority of them. His plus/minus may not be as high as the potential winner of the award, but he did miss seven games in the season. Maybe the one stat that holds him back when it comes to this trophy is his giveaway to takeaway ratio, where he's 1.113 to the bad.

As a prediction, Pavel Datsyuk fell short of the Lady Byng Trophy, see post below, but his numbers for the Selke Trophy should make him feel much better, as that award should be his. A +41 with 97 points in 82 games are fantastic numbers, but his giveaway to takeaway ratio was a staggering 0.472 to the good. He had 144 takeaways this season, almost double his nearest competition for this trophy. He also won 54.4% of his faceoffs, had 40 hits and 42 blocked shots. Of course, the hits and blocks aren't as high as some of the muckers in the league, but an great offense counts as a good defense and Datsyuk has it in spades.