Patrice Bergeron up for an award--for the 8th year in a row

It's pretty impressive, but let's be honest: it's not a shock at all.

Patrice Bergeron is a finalist for the Patrice Bergeron Trophy once again. And by that, I mean the Frank J. Selke Trophy. It's the one given to the best defensive forward--hence why they should just name it after him at this point. Why? Well, this is the eighth straight year he has received the nomination. And of the past seven times he got it, he received the award on four occasions. So yeah, that's pretty good.

Consider this: Selke never won the award himself. Is that misleading? Sure, but it's not wrong. Snopes would give that statement a half true rating. Anyways...

Bergeron is once again deserving of the honor. It's hard to think of any centers who are as good as him defensively on an annual basis. Even though he missed 17 games this season, as 98.5 The Sports Hub points out, Bruins opponents had the 25th least shot attempts in the NHL against Bergeron this past regular season. Think about that: he missed nearly one quarter of the season and he still ranks high. That says something about his talent level.

Oh yeah, and his point total is insanely high too: 79 in 65 games. We did you a huge favor and crunched the numbers here. That's the equivalent of a 100 points in 82 games. So yeah, he could've easily had a 100-point season had he not missed any time in the regular season. That deserves some kind of an award.

The crazy part too is that this season marked a career high point total for Bergeron despite the injury. That said, his game is not slowing down. If anything, it might actually be better than it was in the past. That is awesome to see...