More Fuel for the Hockey Hall of Fame Debate

The endless wrangling over who belongs in the Hockey Hall of Fame gets another shot of adrenalin with this week's election of Cam Neely and Valeri Kharlamov as honored members.

Neely's election is lauded in Boston, where he is among the most beloved Bruins. Others might be less enthusiastic. He was a towering, graceful and unstoppable power forward, but injuries limited Neely to just six or seven exceptional NHL seasons. It gets down to a quantity-versus-quality debate.

There will be less grumbling over Kharlamov, the legendary Soviet forward. But you could mount an argument against him based on quality of competition. The Soviet domestic league was a fraud during his time, as Kharlamov's Red Army team was routinely stacked with the best players in the country. Internationally, he was a dominant player on the dominant team. But how many of his world championship and Olympic goals came against the likes of Poland or Norway?

In the meantime, others will rail against the exclusion of Glenn Anderson, a goal machine with the great Oiler teams of the 1980s.

There is no set criteria for entry into the Hockey Hall of Fame. It goes without saying that the process is driven by subjectivity, politics and personal agendas. And its goal is to identify individual greatness in the ultimate team game. Good luck. In the end, it's not worth worrying over who's in and who's out.

Hockey Hall of Fame selections are controversial not because people really care or really know what they're talking about, but because it's the perfect opportunity for bloggers and media pundits to puff up their vanity arguments: you can make yourself sound like an erudite hockey guy, and no one can prove you're wrong.

The next time you read an article claiming "(insert name here) belongs in/out of the Hockey Hall of Fame," send the writer an email asking how many times he saw the guy play.