It's a special Hall of Fame edition of the NHL on TSN quiz. This week, the panel discusses who deserves consideration for induction into the Hall of Fame in 2013 in both the player and builder category.
As a follow-up, TSN.ca offers you the opportunity to chime in on all the big issues with our insiders. Read up on all the questions and answers, and put in your own two cents on our popular Your Call feature.
If Scott Niedermayer and Chris Chelios are locks as first-ballot Hall of Famers, which two of the following four would get your other votes for the 2013 class: Rob Blake, Eric Lindros, Sergei Makarov, or Brendan Shanahan?
Ray Ferraro: I'm going to go with Lindros and Makarov. For me, I think you have to separate the noise that surrounded Lindros in his career; we're not voting his parents into the Hall of Fame. We're talking about one of the most physically dominant and productive players of his era. Lindros belongs. And Makarov, many people push aside the Soviets' Olympic numbers because they viewed the Soviets as pros playing at that time, but he had 28 points in 22 games in the Olympics. He was dominant in the Canada Cup series, and he won Rookie of the Year in the NHL at whatever age he was. I know it was older, but still Rookie of the Year.
Michael Peca: I'm going, like Ray, with Makarov, maybe one of the greatest international players of all time. And for my other pick, Shanahan: 656 career goals, 13th all-time. You look at everybody ahead of Shanahan on that list, all Hall of Famers with the exceptions of Jaromir Jagr and Teemu Selanne, who are sure to be Hall of Famers. Those are my two.
Mike Johnson: I'm going to follow up with Shanahan. The fact that he played for so long, adjusted his game and became a checker – he was a power forward earlier on in his career – he definitely belongs there with all those goals. And I'm also going to go with Lindros. He was the most dominant; maybe the most intimidating player of his era. Yes, he could get you on the scoreboard like a lot of these other players, but he could also crush you physically. You had to be so aware of him. He was my ‘welcome to the NHL' moment'; playing against him, I realized he was on a different level.
Which of these Hall of Fame eligible players can the best case be made for enshrinement: Tom Barrasso, Guy Carbonneau, Theoren Fleury, or Phil Housley?
Johnson: I'm going to say Housley. He was so gifted offensively; I don't care if he had some holes in his game. Maybe he wasn't physical, maybe he didn't win; the point is he almost put up a point a game for 1,400 games. He was a dominant, gifted offensive defenceman; fourth in all-time scoring amongst defencemen in the NHL. When you're that high up in an important statistical category like that, you belong in the Hall of Fame.
Peca: I'm going Carbonneau. We always talk about offensive numbers when it comes to the Hall of Fame, but some guys do just as much with the intangibles to help their teams win championships, and Carbonneau is a great example. You ask anybody from the teams he's won Stanley Cups with, they would tell you that he was as big a part of the team as anybody.
Ferraro: For me it's Housley. I think of the way he skated, the way he ran a power play, the dominant performance that he would give when he had the puck on his stick. Some people view Housley in a negative way and say he wasn't really a defenceman early on in his career, I think that's exceptional. To be able to play in the NHL as a forward and a defenceman; he belongs.
Who from this group deserves to be the next builder inducted into the Hall of Fame: Pat Burns, Mike Keenan, Pat Quinn, or Fred Shero?
Peca: I'm going with Quinn. There isn't a man in hockey that I had more respect for than Quinn. He drafted me when I was with the Vancouver Canucks; I won't hold any ill will for him trading me away from the Canucks. He was a guy that did a lot of things for the game. He won an Olympic Gold Medal, a World Junior Gold Medal, and while he never did get that Stanley Cup, he had a tremendous winning percentage as a head coach.
Ferraro: I think it's time to right a long wrong, and that's Shero, a back-to-back Stanley Cup winner with the Philadelphia Flyers. Shero was considered an innovator, yet somehow the Hall of Fame passed him by so far. He's been in consideration many times and never been voted in, of course. He took those really physical teams and molded them into Stanley Cup winners.
Johnson: I'm going Keenan. He obviously had a lot of regular season success, international success with the Canada Cup, and the fact that he was part of that Stanley Cup win in 1994 with the New York Rangers with all that pressure. And I think he innovated a little bit with the way he coached in the NHL. Not a lot of people may have cared for his psychological techniques, but the point is he brought them to the forefront, had success with it, and changed the way people coached.
