Golden Knight Reilly Smith for Selke Trophy? Completely reasonable

He heard about it like the Little League kid heard about five tools, like the AYSO player heard about footwork and vision and endurance and balance and agility, like the middle schooler in basketball heard about screening and helping as much as shooting and rebounding.

When it comes to the NHL and its best two-way players, the guys each season whose names are invariably debated as most deserving of the Selke Trophy, ones like Patrice Bergeron and Sean Couturier and Anze Kopitar and Jonathan Toews, you won’t yet hear that of Reilly Smith in a first and perhaps second breath.

But it’s trending that way, all 200 feet of it.

“He’s our best all-around player,” Golden Knights forward Jonathan Marchessault said.

You know the season has headed in a positive direction when one of the few negatives that can be attached to your team is its performance against opponents whose colors prominently feature orange.

Yes, it has come to that for a Knights team rolling along, over and through people.

We’re talking about different shades of sweaters.

Vegas on Thursday night put such Crayola worries to bed by dismissing Edmonton 4-1 before 18,030 at T-Mobile Arena, continuing a run through the Pacific Division that has been silly in its dominance.

They are 14-1-1 in such matchups, with the only setbacks coming against these Oilers.

Vegas is also now 1-4-1 against those Orange-clad jerseys.

I’m sure coach Gerard Gallant will sleep better.

They also held a wedding between the second and third periods, where the bride dropped the ring, Elvis presided over the ceremony while shamelessly promoting a chapel’s name and website and, suddenly, that Chance character didn’t seem so ridiculous.

What isn’t laughable in the least: The continued brilliant play of Smith.

He has been everything and more the Knights hoped for when trading a fourth-round pick to Florida for him at the time of the expansion draft, a massive steal given what the winger has produced.

He pretty much does everything.

He is built in the mold of what Gallant covets, someone you can have on the ice in any situation and trust he will make the correct play.

Smith has 48 points, three shy of his career best set with Boston in 2013-14. It was there he watched, played alongside and learned from Bergeron, a four-time winner of the Selke, given annually to the league’s best defensive forward.

All sorts of guys want to be known as two-way players.

Not all sorts of guys can be truly great at it.

“I’d never compare myself to Selke winners or All-Stars,” Smith said. “But there are people I try and take things from. Bergeron is one. You can pick things up. It’s definitely taxing on your body. Every game is different. Sometimes, you get bounces. Sometimes, you don’t. I just want to help us win. Growing up, I was taught how important it was to be an all-around player.”

He has nine points in his last 12 games and was again effective at both ends Thursday, earning the second assist on a second-period Marchessault goal and teaming with Nate Schmidt on defense to keep Edmonton star Connor McDavid from getting going at all.

The world’s fastest player was limited to two shots.

The most you heard from him was a two-minute penalty for hooking.

There is a wide gap within the Vegas locker room when talking arena-sized resumes. The fame part begins (and maybe even ends) with goalie Marc-Andre Fleury — terrific again in stopping all but one of 29 shots — and then you drop several rungs on the ladder to reach the next group of prominent names.

Smith is one, even though the publicity machine often doesn’t include him, and there isn’t a more valuable player than the one signed through 2021-22 at $5 million annually.

So far, he is a big-time bargain.

“We don’t talk enough about him,” said Marchessault, a former teammate of Smith’s in Florida. “He does everything right. You rarely see a mistake from him. He’s really good. We know what he’s all about and he’s fine with that. He doesn’t need all the media coverage and headlines that other people get. It’s why everyone respects Reilly.”

All 200 feet of him.

Contact columnist Ed Graney at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard on “The Press Box,” ESPN Radio 100.9 FM and 1100 AM, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on Twitter.