The Selke is the wrong trophy for Nico Hischier

Nico Hischier's defensive impacts are not as strong as you'd think – but his overall value is even higher than given credit for.

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By CJ Turtoro (@CJTDevil)

The Selke finalists were announced Friday and New Jersey Devils’ captain, Nico Hischier, was left off the list.

That was much to the chagrin of the Devils’ faithful, who have long been told that Nico would threaten Aleksander Barkov as the heirs apparent to the throne abdicated by Patrice Bergeron.

And after not writing here for, I don’t know, a month, I’m going to do something potentially unwise and say: that’s the right call. (Sorry, Todd. You always know I'm a risk to do something annoying though)

Okay, okay, I’ll wait for you to go clean up the mug that you just shattered against the wall. Tell me when you’re ready.

Good?

You had too many mugs anyway, let’s be honest. 

Okay, let’s get back into it. It gets better, I promise.

Here’s the thing. This article is actually NOT an anti-Hischier article. In fact, I would argue it’s a pro-Hischier article. I’m not here to tell you that Hischier is worse than you think. I’m here to tell you he’s different than you think. And maybe better, actually! 

Let’s open with a couple of visualizations from Evolving-Hockey and HockeyViz depicting the distribution of impacts that Nico Hischier has on the game.

Defensive “Impact”

Nico Hischier is an absolute monster. He’s a force of nature on the rink. But both of these models – which are calculated very differently but converge on this assessment, Hischier’s defensive impact at even-strength is just a little above average, and his impact on shorthanded defense is actually slightly below average.

And we needn’t resort to fancy algorithms for this conclusion. Just count up scoring chances when the player is on the ice vs. when he’s off. These are the rankings (376 forwards with 500+ minutes) of the three Selke Finalists and Nico Hischier.

He doesn’t hold up. 

And the reason is because of a confusion between defensive “skills,” defensive “usage” and defensive “impacts”.

Nico Hischier is an excellent faceoff man. He’s 14th in the NHL in faceoff Elo, which is much higher than the three Selke candidates. Faceoffs are generally considered a defensive skill. But, for Nico, he’s much better in the offensive zone (61%) than the defensive zone (53%). 

Nico Hischier averages 2.02 shorthanded minutes per game played. That’s higher than all the Selke candidates. However, he’s the only one without a shorthanded goal, and his goal rate differential (-11.6 G/60) is nowhere close to theirs (-3.7, -5.1, and -6.1).

Nico looks the part of a Selke trophy candidate. Faceoff specialist, kills penalties, wears the “C”, etc. But, ultimately, the Selke trophy winner should be responsible for preventing goals scored against their team to an elite degree.

While that may be something Nico is capable of (see: shutting down Zibanejad in 2023), it’s not something that he does night-in/night-out in the regular season. He’s busy with other jobs…

Other Impacts