Blackhawks’ Toews honored to win Selke Trophy

Jonathan Toews has his sights set on a bigger trophy, but Friday he made do with winning the Selke Trophy as the NHL’s top defensive forward.

Toews edged Boston’s Patrice Bergeron by 10 points, even though Bergeron had 3 more first-place votes. Detroit’s Pavel Datsyuk was third.

“To be able to go head to head with guys like Patrice Bergeron and Pavel Datsyuk in the playoffs, you understand how much they mean to their teams and how much they contribute offensively and defensively,” Toews said.

“To be talked about in the same sentence and to be compared to those guys is absolutely amazing. It’s a special award to win.”

It was the second time Toews was nominated for the Selke. The other time was in 2010-11 when he finished second to Datsyuk. He is the third Hawks player to win the award, joining Troy Murray in 1986 and Dirk Graham in 1991.

The 25-year-old Toews ranked second on the Hawks with 48 points (23 goals) and ranked third in the NHL with a career-high plus-28 rating in 47 regular-season games. He also shared the league lead with 56 take-aways and ranked second with a Western Conference-best 59.9 faceoff percentage.

There isn’t a more complete player in the league than Toews.

“From even my early days, 5, 6, 7 years-old, playing hockey I was always real competitive,” Toews said. “I would say it wasn’t until I went to Shattuck-St. Mary’s (prep school) and played for coach Tom Ward that I really understood the importance of playing good hockey on both ends of the rink.

“Since then I really worked every little part of my game that I could.”

Toews thanked his parents, his brother and his Hawks teammates.

“You have to thank your teammates especially,” Toews said. “In any case like this it’s rare you get an opportunity to be recognized and when you do you have to acknowledge the fact that you wouldn’t be in this situation without your teammates.

“We had great team success all year and we’re in the Stanley Cup Final now. A lot of it is having great teammates who make me look good out there. I have them to thank for that.”