Hall of Fame Celebrates the NHL's Go-Go Days of the 1980s

It is a startling reminder of how much the NHL game has changed.

Tonight, goaltender Grant Fuhr enters the Hockey Hall of Fame, the latest inductee from the great Edmonton Oilers' dynasty of the 1980s. Those who saw him play know that Fuhr's selection is beyond dispute. But he goes into the Hall with career statistics that would leave him unemployed in today's NHL.

Fuhr personifies the goaltending of his era. The '80s were the highest scoring decade in NHL history, with teams routinely combining for seven or eight goals per game. The goalie's job was to keep his hell-bent teammates at least one step ahead of the other guys.

The Oilers' inaugural NHL season was 1979-80, when they were one of nine teams to score over 300 goals. Last season's highest scoring team was Detroit, with 269 goals. Edmonton's first Stanley Cup came in 1984, when they pounded opponents with 94 goals in 19 playoff games. By comparison, the New Jersey Devils scored 63 times in 24 games to win the 2003 Cup.

Of the Oilers' five Stanley Cup years, Fuhr's best was perhaps the 1987-88 season. He played 75 games, finishing with a 3.43 goals-against average and a .881 save percentage. A year earlier, he won the Vezina Trophy with similar statistics. Were he playing today, those numbers would rank Fuhr around 50th in the league in both categories.

But the great teams of the '80s played to win 8-5 or 4-3, not 2-1. If you needed two goals, you might get one. If you needed six, you might manage four, or even five. But on many, many nights, that's as far as Grant Fuhr would bend.

Joining Fuhr in the Hockey Hall of Fame class of 2003 is Pat LaFontaine, an unstoppable goal scorer of the late 1980s-early 1990s.

In the Builder category, Detroit Red Wings' owner Mike Illitch is joined by one of the great coaches of the modern era, Brian Kilrea. Kilrea has coached one of junior hockey's most successful franchises, the Ottawa 67s, for over three decades.