Who really belongs in the Hall of Fame?
Every NHL player's case analyzed
According to some, Punch Broadbent was the original power forward, the first (NHL?) hockey player to combine skill and physicality in a dominant way.
If that’s true, then even without going through is stats he likely has a pretty good case for the Hockey Hall of Fame. But we’ll look at his career anyway.
Continue reading “Does Harold Punch Broadbent Belong in the Hockey Hall of Fame?”If you never watched Eric Desjardins play, you might think this is a stupid question (unless you have a lot of faith in the concept of Defensive Point Shares). But, for a time, Desjardins was one of the best defencemen in the NHL.
Did he do enough to warrant induction into the Hall of Fame? Listen to us talk about Eric Desjardins here:
Continue reading “Does Eric Desjardins Belong in the Hockey Hall of Fame?”By offensive numbers alone, it sure looks like there’s no much of a case for Vincent Damphousse to be included in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
However, some of us remember him as being particularly reliable defensively.
Was he? Did he do enough on that end? Have we forgotten how good he was because he never won the Selke, or are we mis-remembering?
Listen here:
Continue reading “Does Vincent Damphousse Belong in the Hockey Hall of Fame?”Rod Brind’Amour was a borderline offensive star in his early years and a consensus star defensive forward in the latter half of his career, winning the Selke twice. He is -39 for his career.
Was Brind’Amour that elite defensively? Was he a good enough all around player to be inducted?
Listen to us discuss Brind’Amour’s Hall of Fame case:
Continue reading “Does Rod Brind’Amour Belong in the Hockey Hall of Fame?”Since the position of defenseman was created, there have been defenders who contributed to the team’s offense and there have been players who didn’t much. But this difference was exacerbated by the expansion of the NHL in 1967 and the phenomenon of Bobby Orr, who destroyed scoring records for defenders, and showed that teams could expect scoring from the back-end in ways they never imagined.
This change essentially created a dichotomy between “offensive” defensemen, who scored a lot, albeit not quite as much as Bobby Orr, and “defensive” defensemen, who didn’t score much at all. For our purposes, we’ve arbitrarily assumed that a “defensive defenseman” is a defender which manged .35 adjusted PPG or less throughout their NHL career.
The Hall of Fame’s attitude towards defensively inclined defenders also changed since expansion. The Hall of Fame has inducted six NHL defensemen from that era who scored less than .35 adjusted PPG (of a total of 16 legitimate candidates they could have inducted). But the Hall of Fame has inducted exactly one player who fits the bill, Rod Langway, to play the majority of his career since expansion.
This leads to three possible conclusions:
How do we sort out this problem?
Continue reading “Defensive Defensemen”One of the more controversial recent inductions was Dave Andreychuk, a player whose case is based nearly entirely on longevity.
Does he belong? Listen here:
Continue reading “Does Dave Andreychuk Belong in the Hockey Hall of Fame?”