Montreal Canadiens: Was Phillip Danault snubbed in the Selke nominations?

Phillip Danault has been the go-to on the Montreal Canadiens for defensive hockey, but it looks as if it still wasn’t enough to warner a Selke nomination.

That trade back in 2016 gave the Montreal Canadiens their “number one centre.” It may be a delicate topic as Phillip Danault isn’t the clear-cut number one you see around the league, but he’s been the Habs’ guy for some time now. Danault lined up with Max Pacioretty, Alexander Radulov and is the middleman between Brendan Gallagher and Tomas Tatar. And although his offensive numbers have improved, his play away from the puck is what he’s known for.

It’s gotten to the point where hockey minds have argued as to whether Danault can be the Montreal Canadiens equivalent of Patrice Bergeron. The Boston Bruins star has been one of the pinnacles of defensive hockey in the NHL for the last decade and put another stake in that conversation with his ninth Selke nomination.

Danault reaching Bergeon level would be spectacular given the kind of player he is. He’s won a Stanley Cup, is the Bruins’ go-to guy in high-risk situations and gets the pleasure of lining up with Sidney Crosby during international competition.

In a previous post, I looked at the advanced stats between Danault and Bergeon and noticed that they’re not too far off as some would think.

Bergeron had more takeaways and a better faceoff percentage, but Danault was used more in the defensive zone than him. Additionally, there isn’t much separation in their respective shot suppression stats even though Bergeron has the edge again.

The differences really kick in when you look at their individual scoring. Bergeron puts up a lot more points than Danault. The Montreal Canadiens centre hit 50 points for the first time last season and was on pace to do it again before the pause. That said, Danault hasn’t hit 20 goals much less 30 while Bergeron only has three seasons under his belt where he didn’t put up as much.

But the question remains, was Phillip Danault snubbed out of a Selke nomination.

Bergeron getting a nomination is obvious while he was joined by Ryan O’Reilly and Sean Couturier.

Offensively, O’Reilly and Courtier outscored Danault. The former had 12 goals and 49 assists for 61 points in 71 games while the latter had 22 goals and 37 assists for 59 points in 69 games. But points shouldn’t (emphasis on shouldn’t) matter as much, seeing as the Selke is awarded to the forward who demonstrates the most skill in the defensive aspect of the game.

Similar to my breakdown between Danault and Bergeron, we’ll focus on RelCA/60 (shot suppression) as well as RelSCA/60 (scoring chances against) and HDCA/60 (high-danger chances against) at 5v5.

• Danault: -4.84, -1.45 and -1.06 (TOI – 990:49)
• Bergeron: -5.24, -0.28 and 1.09 (TOI – 735:25)
• O’Reilly: -5.63, -2.18 and -0.03 (TOI – 1015:12)
• Couturier: -6.23, -1.12 and 0.46 (TOI – 964:36)

Again, we can look at relative CF%, which tracks the proportion of chances on either net when said player is on the net. Danault is at 7.04, Bergeron at 6.77, O’Reilly at 2.78 and Couturier is at 7.48. All players see more shots head towards their opponent’s net than their own when getting on the ice, but Couturier has the most while O’Reilly has the least.

When looking at this split, we can’t say definitively that Danault was snubbed out of a nomination, even if analysts such as Ray Ferraro said they had him third on the ballot. I do believe that it was close, but with most awards, scoring played a role.

And then there’s this from Mike Kelly:

That is very fair, but only one of those categories were top-five finishes.

Phillip Danault is really close to the conversation, and it’s likely you’ll see his name on many voter’s lists when those come out. He’s trending down the appropriate path of Selke recognition, and hopefully, another improved season will help him.