Making the one-sentence case for and against 25 Hall of Fame candidates

The Hockey Hall of Fame will announce the class of 2020 today, and time will tell if they did a better job than our picks on Tuesday. For now, let’s consider the cases for and against some of the candidates, as we break down 25 of the biggest names up for consideration.

Wait, twenty-five?

Yeah, there are a lot of candidates out there who can, at the very least, make a plausible case for induction. I wound up with a list of 25, and I’ll still be excluding at least a few names that some readers will be expecting to see.

This is for the men’s player category only, since the drama around the women’s side appears to be mainly whether the committee stops at Jennifer Botterill or inducts two players for the first time since 2010, and the builder category always feels like a total crapshoot from the outside. I’ve also focused on players who made their names in the NHL, although the committee could look to some of the underrepresented international leagues for at least a spot or two.

Still, 25 names is a lot. I’m not even dipping all that far back into history with most of these, which may be a mistake since the committee will occasionally induct a player who’s been eligible forever. And of course, we occasionally get picks that seem to come out of nowhere; if I’d written this piece last year, I doubt I’d have included Guy Carbonneau, but he made it in. At the same time, the committee has 18 members and each can only nominate one candidate, so several of the names below won’t even be discussed in this year’s proceedings.

With 25 names to get through, we’ll limit the case for and against to one sentence each. In a few cases, one run-on sentence, but only one. And while the whole point of this sort of thing is to give us something to argue about, we’ll start with what should be the one candidate that everyone can agree on.

Jarome Iginla

The case for: He’s Jarome Iginla.

The case against: With over 600 goals and 1,300 points to go along with being one of the most respected leaders in the sport, there really isn’t one, and the committee should take roughly three minutes of discussion to wrap this one up before moving on to the tougher calls.

Daniel Alfredsson

The case for: He finished with 1,157 career points and won a Calder to go with a King Clancy and that weird Mark Messier award, not to mention Olympic gold, and if feels like we all just assumed he’d get in eventually when he first became eligible.

The case against: That eligibility came back in 2017, and every year it seems like there are a couple of new candidates that push him off enough ballots that you start to wonder if he’s destined to become the poster child for the Hall of Very Good.

Pierre Turgeon

The case for: At 1,327 points, he’s the leading scorer among eligible players who haven’t been inducted yet by well over 100 points.

The case against: With no awards except for a Lady Byng and only one season in a 19-year career where he received so much as a single Hart vote, Turgeon might be the all-time example of a player who racked up big numbers without ever being considered one of the game’s elite.

Doug Wilson

The case for: I made it in more detail earlier this week, but Wilson was one of the very best defensemen of the 1980s, winning a Norris and finishing in the top 15 in career scoring.

The case against: He was considered a tier below the Ray Bourques and Paul Coffeys of his generation, and his production trailed off just enough after the age of 32 to leave his career numbers a bit short of slam dunk territory.

Theo Fleury

The case for: One of the most memorable and entertaining players of his generation, the diminutive Fleury went from a longshot to even crack the NHL to a Cup-winner and 50-goal scorer who had two 100-point seasons and over 1,000 career points.

The case against: Partly because of some personal struggles, his career didn’t last long enough to rack up the sort of numbers the Hall typically looks for in an 80s/90s offensive star; he didn’t crack 500 goals and his 1,088 points rank just 70th all-time on an era-adjusted basis.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Five one-team stars who went down with the ship

The Sedins made news this week with an article in The Players' Tribune that seemed to all but rule out the possibility of the twins finishing their career anywhere but Vancouver. With the Canucks expected to finish near the bottom of the standings this year, there had been talk the team could make a Ray Bourque-style trade to send its franchise players to a Stanley Cup contender. That door seems closed now.

That means the Sedins will join players like Steve Yzerman, Nicklas Lidstrom and Jean Beliveau in the fairly exclusive club of star players who spent their entire career with the same franchise. Of course, those situations were a little different – those players stuck around to play their final seasons for a contender. The Sedins know that likely won't be the case for them.

It's far less common for a star to go down with the ship, playing out their final seasons with the only team they've ever known even though they realize they don't have a shot at finishing with a Cup or even a playoff run. But it's not unheard of – Shane Doan's recent retirement was one example. Here are five more.

Thomas Steen, Winnipeg Jets

Steen is a reasonably direct comparable to the Sedins – a Swedish forward on a Canadian team who had never won a Cup and clearly wasn't going to if he stayed put. Steen broke in with the Jets in 1981, but by 1994 he was nearing the end of the road with no title in sight.

Of course, the mid-'90s Jets were in even worse shape than today's Canucks. Not only were they a bad team, having finished no higher than fourth in their division since 1990 and failing to win a playoff round since 1987, but they were on the verge of packing up and moving to Arizona. 

So it was no surprise when Steen's name showed up in trade rumors as the 1993-94 deadline approached. The Toronto Maple Leafs were mentioned as a potential destination, and would've made sense – they were a borderline Cup contender that was shopping for veteran help up front. But the deal never happened (the Leafs landed Mike Gartner instead), and Steen returned for one last partial season after the 1994 lockout, during which the Jets finished last in the Central Division for the second straight year.

At the time, that was assumed to be the last season for the Jets in Winnipeg. When a goodbye rally was held after the season, Steen's number was retired to a loud ovation. That made him the first Swedish player to be honored by an NHL team, not to mention a rare case of a player having his number retired when he was still technically active. While the team ended up making a surprise return for one more season in Winnipeg in 1995-96, Steen did not.

So take solace, Canucks fans. Barring a miracle run, the Sedins may be headed towards a Steen-like finish to their careers. But at least you'll still have a team to cheer on after they're gone.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

Grab bag: Kesler vs. Johansen, boring Sens, Kessel vs. Phaneuf

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Are the Senators boring?
- Ryan Johansen calls out Ryan Kesler, kind of
- An obscure player who was the first link between the Ducks and Predators
- The week's three comedy stars
- And we look back at Dion Phaneuf and Phil Kessel sharing some friendly banter about how much they hate each other

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Grab bag: No Olympics for you

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- The NHL isn't going to the Olympics, and we probably shouldn't even be surprised
- A look at the noble stat spoiler
- The week's three comedy stars, including a Penguins who can't dress himself
- An obscure player who's one up on Riley Sheahan
- And a YouTube look back at the first ever Canada/USA best-on-best Olympics showdown

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Five forgotten expansion draft picks

Now that the Vegas Golden Knights have a name, a logo, and a future head coach, everyone is turning their attention to June's expansion draft. Who will the Knights end up with? Matt Murray? Jakob Silfverberg? Trevor van Riemsdyk? Maybe even an established veteran who waives a no-movement clause, like Dion Phaneuf or Rick Nash?

Those are all reasonably big names, and if the Golden Knights wound up picking any of them, you'd think it would make for a memorable moment.

Then again, maybe not. You see, sometimes NHL expansion teams end up taking big name players, and everyone just kind of forgets about it. That's because there's no guarantee that any player taken by an expansion team will ever actually play for that expansion team.

So today, let's take a look back at five fairly big names that have been called at expansion drafts of the past, and how they managed to avoid ever actually suiting up for the fledgling franchises that chose them.

Tim Kerr, 1991

Early NHL expansion drafts of the 60s and 70s were fairly standard. A handful of good players were picked, including names like Terry Sawchuk, Glenn Hall and Bernie Parent. But for the most part, the established teams didn't offer much in the way of talent, and the expansion franchises patched together a team with whatever they could find. That's why most of the early expansion teams were awful.

But by the time the second wave of expansion had hit in the 1990s, the new teams were willing to get a little more creative. Oh, they'd still be awful. But they realized that just because they drafted a player didn't mean they had to keep him, and it became common to see trades worked out as soon as the expansion draft was over (and sometimes even sooner).

Take the 1991 draft, for example. That was the weird expansion/dispersal hybrid that featured the San Jose Sharks and the Minnesota North Stars, which we covered in some depth over the summer. The most famous weird pick from that draft was the very last one, in which the North Stars picked quasi-retired Hall of Famer Guy Lafleur because they didn't want any Quebec Nordiques and the rules wouldn't allow them to pass. But another well-known sniper was also taken that day.

That would be Tim Kerr, a four-time 50-goal scorer for the Flyers who'd been slowed down by injuries. By 1991, he hadn't put together a full season in four years. But he was still scoring at well over a point-per-game pace when he did play, and seemed like the sort of guy who could be a good gamble for a contender.

The Sharks weren't a contender, but the Rangers were. And so the Sharks grabbed Kerr off of the Flyer's unprotected list, and then immediately flipped him to the Rangers in exchange for Brian Mullen. It was a smart deal for San Jose; Mullen ended up being their second-leading scorer in their debut season. It worked out worse for the Rangers, as Kerr struggled through another injury-shortened year before being dealt to Hartford.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

Grab Bag: The Oilers' new mascot will eat your children

In The Friday Grab Bag (which is once again appearing on Thursday thanks to the World Cup):
- The Oilers' new mascot is terrifying
- Jacob Trouba is reminding me that I kind of miss holdouts
- An obscure player who'd be a Team Europe alumni if it had existed when he played
- The NHL is doing a Top 100 players list and has already screwed it up
- And the game that started Canada's current run of international hockey dominance

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Ranking the World/Canada's Cup five Game Twos

Tuesday night's Game 1 of the World Cup final, which saw Team Canada earn a 3-1 win over Team Europe, sets up a do-or-die Game 2 Thursday night. A Canada win would end the tournament, and the trophy will be in the building, unless the league has come to its senses and thrown that ugly thing into a raging bonfire instead.

There have been seven World and Canada Cups in international hockey history, but we didn't get to see a Game 2 in all of those. Twice, in 1981 and 2004, the format called for a one-game final. But it's been best-of-three in the other tournaments, which gives us five Game 2 to work with. So today, let's take a look back at those five games, and rank them from worst to best.

As always, this is opinion only, and if you disagree, then you're wrong.

No. 5 – 1984: Canada 6, Sweden 5

The road there: Canada stumbled through the 1984 tournament, going 2-2-1 through the round robin and barely making the playoff round as the fourth seed. But Team Canada earned a trip to the final thanks to an overtime win over the Soviets in the semi-final, and they were facing an upstart Swedish team that had beaten them in their round robin meeting and had just embarrassed the Americans with a 9-2 blowout. The Canadians took the opener by a 5-2 final, but the second game proved closer.

Game 2: The game looked like a laugher early on, with Canada scoring four times in the first seven minutes and adding a fifth before the first period was over. A Paul Coffey goal early in the second made it 6-1, setting the stage for a furious Team Sweden comeback. They scored three unanswered goals to close out the second period, and draw to within 6-5 early in the third. But that was as close as they came, as Canada held on for the win and the series sweep.

The aftermath: This turned out to be the first of three straight Canada Cup wins for Team Canada, and remains the only finals appearance by Team Sweden.

The bottom line: What looked like a laugher wound up being a reasonably entertaining contest. But the game everyone remembers from the 1984 Canada Cup will always be that semi-final thriller with the Soviets.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

When NHL compensation rules go bad (or: How Mark Messier became a Shark)

Hockey history is a rich tapestry of traditions, trends and innovations. Many stuck around to become part of the game's enduring fabric. Others, not so much. "It made sense at the time" is an ongoing feature in which we'll look back at one of the odder things that used to be part of the NHL's culture and wonder how exactly it made sense at the time and that everyone was OK with it.

At least week's board of governors' meeting, the NHL surprised no one by doing away with its much-maligned compensation plan for hiring coaches and GMs. The system had been meant to standardize compensation for teams that hired away personnel who were still under contract to other teams, but was doomed by confusion over whether it should apply to those who'd already been fired.

In other words, it was a nice idea in theory that turned into an embarrassing mess once it saw the light of day. It will probably not shock you to learn that this is not the first time this has happened to the NHL.

In the years leading up to the 2004 lockout, the NHL featured an ever-increasing disparity between franchises in terms of revenue and spending power. This led many to yearn for a hard salary cap, while others proposed milder solutions like a luxury tax or increased revenue sharing, but virtually everyone agreed that it was a problem. And this was especially true when it came to free agency, as small-market teams found it difficult to hold on to star players who knew that a big-market payday was looming on the horizon.

The NHL's higher-ups, to its credit, took action. They couldn't solve the problem -- that was what the coming lockout would be for -- but they could do the next best thing and even the playing field.

>> Read the full post on ESPN.com

A brief history of NHL playoff goats

The Maple Leafs react to the announcement
of that night's starting goalies

The second round of the playoffs has already brought its share of surprises. And while that has some fans looking forward to the conference final matchups, others are dealing with bitter disappointment.

Many in Philadelphia are pointing fingers at the team's trio of underperforming goaltenders. Capital fans watched so-called superstars like Nicklas Backstrom and Alexander Semin disappear for much of the team's shocking sweep at the hands of the Lightning. And despite his team still leading the series, struggling Sharks' star Patrick Marleau has been labelled "gutless" by former teammate Jeremy Roenick.

Of course, assigning blame after a tough loss is nothing new, and the NHL has a long history of fitting players for goat horns. When the pressure is at its highest, it doesn't take much -- one bad game, one mistake, one momentary lapse can be all it takes to change a reputation forever.

Let's take a walk through the history books and spare a moment to mourn some of those in the hockey world who may never live down their moment of postseason shame.

April 21, 2003 - Philadelphia goalie Roman Cechmanek gives up an embarrassing goal while struggling to retrieve his trapper, leading the Flyers to vow to never again employ a goalie with a functioning glove hand.

June 7, 1994 - Pavel Bure fails to score against the Rangers on a critical penalty shot in the Stanley Cup finals, partly due to a great reaction by Mike Richter but mostly because Gary Bettman had snuck onto the ice and flipped the net over.

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