Duncan Keith has another piece of hardware to add to his already impressive trophy case.
The Chicago Blackhawks’ defenseman was named the winner of the 2015 Conn Smythe Trophy on Monday night following the team’s 2-0 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in their cup-clinching win, becoming just the eighth different defenseman to win the award. He is the first to win it since Scott Niedermayer won for the Anaheim Ducks during the 2007 postseason.
Keith won the award by a unanimous decision and added to his playoff legacy by scoring what would be the game-winning goal in Game 6.
It was a magnificent run for the 31-year-old Keith as he took one of the heaviest workloads that any player has ever experienced in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. With the Blackhawks leaning heavily on only four defenseman for most of the playoffs, Keith was called on to play more than 31 minutes per game and became just the fourth player in league history (or at least as far back as time on ice has been tracked) to play more than 700 minutes in a single postseason, joining a list that includes only Drew Doughty (2014), Chris Pronger (2006) and Nicklas Lidstrom (2002).
Every time it seemed like the workload might start to wear him down, he seemed to always find a way to come back stronger the next night or find a way to get stronger as each game progressed. But for the Blackhawks, it wasn’t just the number of minutes that Keith played that were so important. It was the way he dominated the game in those minutes. Not only was he a force in the defensive zone, but he also had a huge hand in helping to drive the team’s offense.
He finished the postseason with a league-leading 18 assists and was just the 20th defenseman in league history to record at least 20 points in a single playoff run (Keith finished with 21). In the end, he had a hand in 30 percent of the goals the Blackhawks scored during the playoffs. Over the past 15 years only one other defenseman in the league had a hand in more than 30 percent of his team’s goals in the playoffs (Pronger in 2006).
Keith, who has been with the Blackhawks for 10 seasons now, has won three Stanley Cups, two Norris Trophies as the NHL’s best defenseman, and a Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.
