St. Louis Blues Ryan O’Reilly Announced As Selke Finalist
By Todd Panula
The St. Louis Blues continue to get recognition from the NHL for regular season awards. This time, it’s another of their players up for the Selke Trophy.
Like any good championship team, the only hardware any of the St. Louis Blues really care about is the Stanley Cup. Once you get a taste of it, you can’t help but try for seconds.
Unfortunately, winning the Stanley Cup is like trying to eat at a buffet in the Mad Max world. It’s one of the toughest things to do once and getting seconds is even harder.
However, even with this current incarnation of the Blues being all about the team, that doesn’t mean they won’t accept any personal accolades. Often times, if you’re up for a personal award, that means you had a good season and that will often translate into the team having a good season.
Such is the case for Ryan O’Reilly. O’Reilly took home a couple personal trophies in 2018-19 and was second in voting for the Lady Byng and the Blues were helped to a championship because of it.
We already knew O’Reilly was up for the Byng again, his third time being in the top three. Now, he is a finalist for the Selke Trophy for the second year in a row.
O’Reilly won the award last season, voted as the top defensive forward in the NHL. It was his first time winning the award, having finished with votes in prior seasons, but never higher than sixth.
O’Reilly finished 2018-19 with 77 points, but also a plus-22 and had a defensive point share of 3.0. Only Anze Kopitar has ever had a higher stat in that category, interestingly enough twice with a 3.1 and 3.3.
In 71 games in 2019-20, O’Reilly had 61 points and was a plus-11. He had 42 hits, which was six more than 2018-19 when he played 11 more games, and 69 takeaways vs 22 giveaways. O’Reilly also had a 2.1 defensive point share.
O’Reilly has stiff competition. His counterparts are Patrice Bergeron and Sean Couturier.
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Bergeron has won the award four times in his career, which ties him with Bob Gainey for the most.
This is Couturier’s second time as a finalist. He finished second in the voting in 2017-18 when Kopitar won.