Persevering with on with the sluggish drip of saying award winners from the 2023-24 common season, the Nationwide Hockey League has introduced this 12 months’s winner of the Frank J. Selke Trophy, given to the participant who greatest excels within the defensive features of the sport. The league introduced this 12 months’s winner as captain of the Florida Panthers, Aleksander Barkov, who will win the award for the second time in his profession.
Barkov, who final gained the award over the 2020-21 season, will finish the two-year run of former Boston Bruins captain, Patrice Bergeron. Now incomes his second Selke Trophy victory, Barkov is tied with the captain of the Los Angeles Kings, Anze Kopitar, with essentially the most Selke Trophies amongst energetic gamers.
There may be little doubt about Barkov’s case for the win, as he has often been one of many league’s high defensive forwards for the final a number of years. This season specifically, Barkov completed with a +33 score, a +31 takeaway-to-giveaway ratio, and saved the puck within the offensive zone 46.3% of the time at even power, placing him within the 97th percentile within the NHL.
Though being a person award, Barkov’s defensive capabilities are actually boosted by the remainder of his teammates on the Panthers roster, as they tied for first within the league this season with 2.41 GA/G. Not solely did Barkov assist Florida excel at limiting objectives in opposition to, however the group completed with the third-fewest photographs in opposition to, in addition to sustaining the league’s sixth-best penalty kill.
