Shane the Pain: Pinto Making Life Miserable for Opponents, Drawing Selke Love
- Chris Stevenson
- Feb 3
- 3 min read
The closest an Ottawa Senator has come to winning the Selke Trophy, awarded to the forward “who best excels at the defensive aspects of the game,” is Magnus Arvedson’s runner-up finish in 1998-99.
The Machine finished second to Jere Lehtinen of the Dallas Stars.
It feels like the field will be wide open this season with Aleksander Barkov, the winner in 2021, ’24 and ’25, out since training camp with a torn ACL.
The Selke has, for the most part, been a reputation trophy. While analytics have helped identify the best defensive players, history tells us once a player has a reputation as a great defensive forward, that’s that. It explains why there have been so many multiple winners in the history of the award: Patrice Bergeron (six times) and Barkov, Guy Carbonneau, Pavel Datsyuk and Lehtinen, three times. Either Barkov or Bergeron, now retired, have won the Selke since 2022.
Selke voting is much more subjective as shown in voting by the members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. In last year’s voting, 14(!) players received first-place votes. All the other awards had much more of a consensus: only eight players received first-place votes for the Hart Trophy, two for the Vezina (voted on by the GMs), three for the Calder and three for the Norris.
Forty-three players received at least a fifth-place vote in the Selke balloting.
Veteran Claude Giroux was the only Senator getting consideration last season with one second-place vote to finish 25th on the list.
That has to change this year, doesn't it?
Shane Pinto is coming off a stretch where he faced four of the elite centres in the league: Jack Eichel of the Vegas Golden Knights; Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche; Nico Hischier of the New Jersey Devils and Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
So … (5v5 stats according to naturalstattrick.com)
Opponent TOI CF CA Goals Scoring chances (High Danger)
Eichel 13:37 16-12 0-0 7 (1) - 9 (3)
MacKinnon 16:51 8-12 0-0 6 (2) - 6 (1)
Hischier 5:28 5-2 0-0 4 (1) - 0 (0)
Crosby 7:22 7-3 0-0 5 (2) - 1 (0)
Totals: 43:18 36-29 0-0 22 (6) -16 (4)
This is not to overlook the contribution of winger Michael Amadio to the success of the Senators’ shutdown line. He deserves his own share of accolades for his defensive game and deserves consideration for the Selke, as well. Or the backing of defenceman Jake Sanderson, who is also deployed as much as possible against the other team’s top players.
But this feels like a coming-out season for Pinto and his inclusion in the Selke Trophy conversation especially since the usual suspects aren’t around for consideration.
That’s an important first step since it seems the arc to winning this award is getting noticed on some scale, having more people pay attention and finally being appreciated.
• • •
Senators captain Brady Tkachuk has told everybody he can’t fight as long as he has his thumb and wrist taped up. It’s the precautionary support he needs after undergoing surgery to fix a ligament he injured when he was shoved into the boards by Nashville Predators defenceman Roman Josi in the third game of the season.
Tkachuk has said he misses the fisticuffs, a part of his game which helps define him as the NHL’s premier power forward.
So, I wondered, does he think anybody has been taking advantage of his inability to fight and taking liberties?
He pondered the question in front of his stall for a couple of moments before shrugging it off.
“I don’t think so,” he said. The reason?
He rightfully pointed out that wrap is going to come off his hand at some point and he’s got a long memory.
• • •
The Senators finishing out of the playoffs and winning the draft lottery in a season in which they don’t have their first pick would be the most-Senators thing ever.
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