Leon Draisaitl is one of the elite goal scorers and point producers in the NHL. He’s the rare combination of being a great finisher and passer. But Draisaitl’s two-way game has vastly improved the past few seasons, and this year, while he is tied for the NHL lead in goals, he is also one of the leading contenders for the Selke trophy.

Draisaitl and Sam Reinhart lead the NHL with 16 goals. Alex Ovechkin (injured) has 15 while Mikko Rantanen and William Nylander have 14 and Kyle Connor, Kirill Kaprizov, Nico Hischier and Connor McMichael have 13. A total of 29 players has 10+ goals thus far.

Draisaitl has yet to win the Maurice “the Rocket” Richard trophy for most goals in a season, despite scoring the second-most goals in the NHL over the past six years.

Draisaitl finished second in 2019 with 50 goals. Ovechkin won with 51.

Draisaitl was fourth in 2020 with 43. Ovechkin and David Pastrnak had 48.

Draisaitl was fourth again in the shortened 2021 season with 31. Auston Matthews led with 41.

Draisaitl finished second in 2022 with 55, five back of Matthews.

Draisaitl was fourth in 2023 with 52, while teammate Connor McDavid won with 64.

Last year, he had a down year, for him, with 41 goals and he finished 14th.

Over that six-year span Draisaitl has scored 272 goals, second to Matthews’ 294. Draisaitl finished third in assists with 371 and second in points with 643. Matthews was seventh with 517.

Draisaitl is the only NHL player in the past decade with more than one season with 50 goals and 50 assists. He’s done it three times (2019, 2022 and 2023). McDavid, Pastrnak, Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen have done it once. The only other active players to do it are Sidney Crosby (2010), Evgeni Malkin (2012) and Ovechkin (2006, 2009, 2010).

Draisaitl is on pace to reach 50-50 for the fourth time in his career and he’d become only the ninth player to reach 50-50 four times. He’ll join Jari Kurri (4x), Phil Esposito and Steve Yzerman (5x), Marcel Dionne, Guy Lafleur and Mario Lemieux (6x), Mike Bossy (7x) and Wayne Gretzky (9x).

Draisaitl is the best goal scorer and passer in the 2000s and will be among the greats of the greats when his career is over.

When he was drafted in 2014, he was considered a pass-first player. No one projected him to become a dominant finisher, but he’s a diligent worker. He mastered the sharp-angle one timer, and he’s a very accurate shooter who doesn’t need many shots to score.

Since the start of the 2018-19 season to today, he has 288 goals on only 1,419 shots. Matthews leads the NHL with 299 goals, and he’s fired 1,863 shots. Draisaitl has the best shooting percentage in the NHL the past seven seasons at 20.3%. Brayden Point is second at 19.9% (226 goals on 1,134 shots) followed by Mark Schiefele at 18.4% (196 goals on 1,064 shots).

Draisaitl’s offence is elite, but this season, so too is his defensive, two-way play.

For the first 15 seasons it was awarded, the Selke trophy went mainly to great checking forwards like Bob Gainey, Guy Carbonneau, Steve Kasper, Doug Jarvis, Dirk Graham and others. Troy Murray, the pride of St. Albert, did win it in 1986 when he scored 45 goals and 99 points. In the 1980s teams had third lines who would regularly go up against the top players. Some players went as far as “shadowing” the stars, by spending the entire shift skating right beside them.

The award started to evolve in the 1990s, when it evolved to more two-way forwards, rather than just great checkers. Doug Gilmour won it in 1993 when he scored 127 points.

Big stars like Sergie Federov (2x), Ron Francis, Steve Yzerman and Pavel Datsyuk (3x) won it between 1994-2010. Jere Lehtinen won it three times, and was the last winger to win it, which is unfortunate, as many of today’s wingers get overlooked.

Since 2012 Patrice Bergeron has dominated the award winning it six times, while Aleksander Barkov and Anze Kopitar won it twice and Ryan O’Reilly and Sean Couturier won it once.

Federov (twice) and Gilmour are the only players to win the award scoring 100+ points. Murray had 99, Datsyuk won it twice with 97 points and Kopitar tallied 92 when he won it in 2018.

Barkov won it last season with 80 points, however, Matthews finished third and Sam Reinhart finished fourth. Matthews led the NHL with 69 goals and had 107 points, while Reinhart scored 57 goals and 94 points.

Matthews and Reinhart had huge offensive numbers, but also very good possession numbers and were deserving of being in the conversation. Here are their even strength numbers for goals for/against, shots for/against and xGF%.

Player              GF-GA (GF%)            SF-SA (SF%)                  xGF%
Barkov           72-35 (67.29)           608-423 (58.97)              59.27%
Reinhart        76-45 (62.81)          661-486 (57.63)               58.65%
Matthews      75-50 (60%)            790-574 (57.9%)              56.11%

Barkov had a very good season, no question, but Matthews wasn’t punished for being elite offensively and finished third. Matthews took more total face offs (1319 to 1,100), more EV face offs (1,189 to 786) and more defensive zone face offs (379-268). Barkov did have a better face off winning% at 57.3 to 53.5.

I’d argue for many years, Sidney Crosby got overlooked for the Selke, especially in 2019 when he finished with 100 points. Crosby did finish fourth in Selke that season but look at his overall stats compared to the top-three vote getters in Ryan O’Reilly (first), Mark Stone (second) and Bergeron (third). Here are their EV numbers that season.

Player              GF-GA (GF%)            SF-SA (SF%)                xGF%
O’Reilly            74-51 (59.2)             731-606 (54.6)             53.8%
Bergeron         63-41 (60.5)            524-406 (56.3)            57.2%
Stone               82-63 (56.5)            750-659 (53.2)             56.1%
Crosby             94-65 (59.1)            821-680 (55.7)             54.5%

He had almost identical GF% as O’Reilly, higher SF% and xGF%. The vote was quite close that season with O’Reilly picking up 48 first place votes, Stone had 42, Crosby 34 and Bergeron 31. Crosby also finished a distant second to Nikita Kucherov in Hart trophy voting that season, and I do wonder if some voters struggle having a player up for the Hart and Selke.

Through the first quarter of this season, Draisaitl is a stronger contender for the Selke than the Hart. Draisaitl has been Edmonton’s best and most consistent performer, and his EV play has been stellar. He leads in EV goals with 14 and is second in points with 24. He also leads forwards in SF% at 63.73% outshooting them 253-144, and has a solid 61.36 GF% (27-17) and an xGF% of 56.6%.

So far, Barkov has a 59.5SF% (125-85), a 53.3GF% (16-14) and a 53.05xGF%.

Reinhart has a 54.98SF% (182-149), 59.09GF% (26-18) and 52.63xGF%.

Matthews is skating with a 56.74SF% (122-93), a 54.17GF% (13-11) and a 53.32xGF%.

It is early, but Draisaitl should get Selke consideration.

I asked the NHL’s best player what attributes in an opposing forward he finds the most challenging.

“Good size and reach, a good skater and maybe most importantly a good stick,” said McDavid. “A good stick is very challenging, because they break up so many plays. You need to read the ice and have great anticipation. Leon has an incredible stick. I don’t believe he gets enough credit for his defensive reads. He also takes tonnes of face offs overall and in the defensive zone and I think he’s defensive game has been overlooked because he’s so dynamic offensively.”

Draisaitl has taken the fifth-most face offs in the NHL since 2018-19. Last season, Draisaitl had a solid season at even strength and 5×5. He outscored the opposition 94-67 and he’s continued that early this season. His possession numbers have been excellent and he’s scoring at the best rate of his career at even strength. He already has 14 goals, and his career high is 31 set in 2019. He had 20 and 19 the past two seasons and looks like he will crush those this season.

The NHL has never had the goal scoring leader win the Selke, and there is no guarantee Draisaitl will win either, but at this point, he’s a strong candidate for both.

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