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If you really look at the voting for the Selke award, you realize that the voters (i.e., the Professional Hockey Writers Association) have no idea what they’re doing. The voting is clearly not based on a player’s defensive ability, but rather on the amount of media attention the player is getting at the time. To start off, here’s the 2001/02 voting (top 10 only):

Which we’ll compare to the previous year’s voting (2000/01):

Now, if the Selke voting reflected actual defensive skill, then there would be relative consistency from year-to-year, with the same group of players appearing in about the same order. Generally, players do not gain or lose significant degrees of ability in a single year. With that in mind, we’ll look at the differences between 2000/01 and 2001/02.

2002’s winner, Mike Peca, is not on the 2001 list. This is fine, since Peca did not play in 2000/01. More on him later. But the 2001 winner, John Madden, is not on the 2002 list either, and he did play that year. Madden is still an excellent checker, yet he dropped from #1 to out of the top 10 in a single year. In fact, in his rookie year (1999/2000) he was out of the top 10 as well. So he went from out of the top 10 to first to out of the top ten in successive years. His defensive prowess simply cannot have fluctuated this much. So why has his Selke ranking fluctuated this much?

The answer is, media attention. In Madden’s rookie year, he was a rookie (duh), and therefore did not receive much attention for his defensive skills. In 2000/01, probably partly due to increased offensive output, the media began to gush about his defence, so much so that they voted him the Selke. The nest season, he got off to a terrible start offensively, and all we heard about was what a disappointing year he was having. By the end of the year, he had quietly recovered nicely to have a good year. But when it came time for the Selke voting, the media only remembered that he had a bad year, and he fell from #1 to out of the top 10.

This sort of thing can be seen throughout the Selke voting. Take Craig Conroy as another example. When the Blues’ checking line of Pellerin-Conroy-Atcheynum gained a lot of media attention in 1997/98, Conroy wound up 3rd in Selke voting. The line eventually broke up and in subsequent years, receiving less attention, Conroy fell to 6th in the voting, then out of the top 10 in 1999/00 and 2000/01. Then, he found himself on a line with NHL leading scorer Jarome Iginla in 2001/02. He had, by far, a career year offensively, and therefore received all kinds of media attention. He’s scoring, and he’s great defensively. Suddenly he was 2nd in the voting again. Apparently it took Conroy’s offence to remind the media how good he is defensively.

Joe Sakic is another good example. He began to gain a good defensive reputation a few years ago; he finished 10th in Selke voting in 2000, when he had 81 scoring points. The following year he scored 118 points, and jumped to 2nd in the voting. Last year he fell to “only” 79 scoring points, and dropped to 9th in the Selke results. Coincidence? I think not.

Sergei Fedorov is a similar case. In 1996, after a season of 107 points, he easily won the Selke award. He had since not had more than 69 points, nor has he finished higher than 8th in the Selke voting. Another strange coincidence, I’m sure.

Mike Peca is a subtler example. His defensive reputation was established in 1996/97, when he first took the Selke award. Over the next several years he was very consistent, and therefore drew less and less attention to himself. He dropped to 2nd, then 3rd, then 5th in the Selke voting. Then he sat out the 2000/01, which was a wonderful move for his defensive reputation. All the media could talk about was how great a defensive player and leader Peca was, and how much Buffalo was missing him. So when he resurfaced with the Islanders, all this attention carried over, and he once again was considered the best defensive forward in the league.

Ron Francis is another example of offence equaling defence. In his last big offensive year (1995/96, 119 points), he was 2nd in the Selke voting. Since joining Carolina, where he has never recorded more than 77 points, he has not been in the top 10 once. A subtler example in Brian Rolston. 2001/02 was the first time he was in the top 10 for the Selke (5th place); it was also a career year for him in points and goals.

There are more examples, but I’ll stop here. The voting for the Selke award is meaningless. It reflects the amount of media attention the player is receiving at the time of the vote, rather than the player’s actual defensive skills. Certainly great defensive forwards do win the award at times, but since it’s so hard to rate defence in hockey, we often rely on the media to tell us who is defensively skilled. But as the Selke voting shows, most of the time they don’t know themselves who the good players are.