Montag, 23. Juni 2014

The Hockey Hall of Fame and Eric Lindros



It's the end of June. The Stanley Cup Final is over and congratulations to the Los Angeles Kings for winning the best trophy in sports. Individual Awards will be handed out soon. The NHL Entry Draft will happen at the end of the week and that will surely be exciting. Free Agency is just around the corner.

But there is one more thing that will happen today, and as with every year it will be surrounded with a bit of controversy: The Hockey Hall of Fame will announce its 2014 class of inductees.

As a Flyers fan, this is always a strange time. At least up until recently. We were settled with just accepting that the Hall of Fame committee is an old boys club where old grudges are still being held onto. Fred Shero would never get in because he is the bad guy that allowed the Broad Street Bullies to run rampant. Mark Howe wouldn't get in because he played in the WHA, and people can't be rewarded if they ran counter to the establishment.

However, something appears to have changed, and these old injustices have been rectified as both of those candidates have been inducted. Howe was inducted in 2012, and Shero in 2013, and their accomplishments have been properly honored. It was fantastic and joyous events both times.

It doesn't end there though, as the Flyers have a 3rd candidate who has been passed over a couple of times already, and his name is Eric Lindros. Lindros is a controversial figure. He often butted heads with owners and managers, his career was cut short due to concussion problems and other health issues, and some less than savory rumors were told about him as well.

But it is pretty much undeniable that Lindros was a very important player to the sport. He was a dominant force and he has both the stats and hardware to show for it. He was also the center-piece of what I call the most significant trade in the sport after the Gretzky trade. Lindros's career may not be a story of great triumphs and accomplishment, but I think it is a great story nonetheless. And last but not least, he definitely had the thing the hall is named after: Fame.

Lindros has been passed over twice already though. There are other very comparable players that made it in at the same time, such as Pavel Bure, Mats Sundin or Adam Oates, who like Lindros do not have the defining team victory to them, so Lindros's lack of a Stanley Cup can't be a root cause here. There have also been three veritable star players in Chris Chelios, Scott Niedermayer and Joe Sakic inducted in those two years, and adding in Brendan Shanahan we are now at seven candidates for eight spots. I am not sure why Lindros hasn't been the 8th player.

The Hockey Hall of Fame has the arbitrary rule to not induct more than four male and two female players per year. From an outside perspective this makes at least a little bit of sense, establishing an air of exclusivity and importance to it. It also makes it a bit easier on the organizers and participants of the Induction ceremony, a great spectacle and one of the few high-class events during the season. But it is arbitrary nonetheless.

Yet the Hockey Hall of Fame often opts to not use the full number of slots it made available to itself. Last year it only inducted three male players and one female. While I can see the utility of the limitation from a logistics point, in the overall design and purpose of the Hall of Fame it seems counter-productive. If there are seven similarly great players with a worthy resume to their name, all of them should be inducted at the same time. Should it happen that on occasion there are none, so be it.

But as it is now, there are two sure-fire candidates this year in Dominik Hasek and Peter Forsberg, leaving another two slots for male players. Besides Lindros, some other players are throwing their hats into the ring for it, such as Mike Modano, Rob Blake, Jeremy Roenick and Mark Recchi. Linros's odds here aren't bad at all, but if the committee fills up its slots this year and Lindros is not among the inductees, I can do nothing but chalk it up to the arbitrary four player limit.

But for now I remain hopeful. Let's see of Lindros can make it three-for-three for the Flyers this year.

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