St. Patrick, the Miracle Man, and the Duffer
The Hockey Hall of Fame made the easy and obvious choices yesterday, when it announced that Patrick Roy and Herb Brooks will join the roster this fall. Roy redefined goaltending. Brooks was the coach behind the Miracle on Ice, and did much more besides. No serious argument can be made against either of them.
There was another player elected yesterday: Dick Duff. Dick Duff? With Glenn Anderson and Kevin Lowe still outside looking in?
Players who became eligible this year but didn't make the cut include Pavel Bure, Doug Gilmour, Adam Graves, Mike Richter and Phil Housley. A serious Hall of Fame, with appropriately lofty standards, would welcome none of them. But having already invited the likes of Duff and Clarke Gillies over the transom, the Hall has no business leaving Gilmour or Bure on the doorstep. Or Anderson and Lowe. Or Dino Ciccarelli. Or Steve Larmer.
Roy and Brooks belong in anyone's Hockey Hall of Fame, but their selection does little to secure this Hall's failing grip on credibility.
Speaking of credibility, the institution still insists on defining itself as the NHL Insider's Club, with Russians and other Europeans woefully underrepresented. In the deluded world of the Hockey Hall of Fame, Dick Duff is a legend, while Vsevolod Bobrov and Boris Mikhailov are mere curiosities.
Comments
One simple test for judging a player’s HoF-worthiness is “If you put together a 10-15 minute highlight reel of this player’s career, would that be likely to get non-hockey sports fans interested in hockey?”
Granted this is a grossly qualitative assessment, but a player’s “Wow!” factor is big on my list. . . . And that gives Pavel Bure a VIP ticket, all other objections aside (un-Selke-like defensive play, Russian mob rumors, contract holdouts, and cherry picking). If the gravity of his stickhandling could pull 18,000 people out of their seats, then I’ll personally roll out the red carpet for The Russian Rocket.