Cooperstown and Canton threads are up. Here’s one for pro hockey!
Who’s the worst NHL pro in the Hockey Hall of Fame to date?
I fished this one around with my hockey friends on FB, and the early frontrunner appears to be Clark Gillies, who was by all accounts a mediocre player who got inducted on the coattails of the Islanders dynasty.
Any other players come to mind?
So many to choose from. The hockey HOF is the easiest one to get into. Far too many players in there.
Take Punch Broadbent for example: His career numbers suck big time. 303 GP, 121 G, 172 TP. But he did score an eye popping 32 goals in 24 games in 1921. That is great for the time, but he didn’t have a long or productive career by todays standards.
Another curious case is Toe Blake. 577 GP, 527 TP. Very solid numbers for the era that he played in. A player with those numbers wouldn’t even get a sniff at the HOF today. Granted, Blake spent his playing days with the Canadiens, so that likely helped get him into the hall. I would have no issue with moving him into the builder category, where he probably belongs, and take him out of the players.
Ike-because the players you mention played 80+ years ago, their numbers seem small. They are being compared to contemporaries (as ALL HoF should be) they don’t seem egregiously bad.
But then what is the standard for today? Lanny McDonald with 1111 GP and 1006 TP compares well with the PPG of Toe Blake, and Lanny is in the hall. Bernie Nicholls had 1209 TP in 1127 GP. That is a better PPG performance than Lanny or Toe, not to mention that monster season he had with Gretzky in LA. Yet Bernie Nicholls isn’t in the HOF. I don’t ever hear his name with regards to the HOF, other than in passing, once in a while.
The NHL of the Toe Blake era was so different from today’s NHL that it’s nerly impossible to compare players across eras.
I don’t think Blake is a great example because, really, he’s in as a coach as much as he is as a player no matter what category they say it is. But to use him as an example, Blake played from 1935 to 1948. The NHL in those years could barely be described as a professional sports league in the modern sense and was in no way comparable to today’s NHL; it had just six or seven teams, had essentially no players who were not from Canada, drew from a talent development system that amounted to nothing more than “Hey, I know this kid in Belleville who’s pretty good,” and Blake’s career went through the war depleted years, too.
In fairness, Blake was an MVP and scoring champion in 1939, which gives him something Lanny McDonald or Bernie Nicholls do not have. Of course, Blake’s team was awful, so frankly it wasn’t necessarily the best MVP choice of all time.
Dominating the NHL of 1939 is somewhat akin to winning a National League batting title in 1886. You want to honor the great players of yesteryear but holy SHIT, they sure honored a lot of them in the NHL. By my count about 135 players - more than half of the player inductees - were inducted for play before 1967. That is, on the face of it, positively stupid. Since 1967 the NHL has played what, five, six, seven times as many games as it did from its infancy to 1967? I will grant that the Hall has done an admirable job of inducting pre-NHL players, but still.
Until 1967 there were only 6 teams. The concentration of talent was huge. Every team had very good players at every position. There were no weak players.
Sigh.
First of all, no, there were not always just six teams. In fact, despite the “original six” name, the Bruins, Rangers, Blackhawks and Red Wings were not original franchises. There is precisely one original franchise; the Canadiens. You could argue the Leafs are, too, if you argue they are a continuation of the Toronto Arenas.
Secondly, let me repeat ymself; there was NO talent organization and identification system worth mentioning, and there was almost no organized hockey outside of Canada. The NHL had no Europeans and almost no Americans. Yes, the talent was concentrated in a handful of teams, but there wasn’t a lot of talent.
Georges Vezina was discovered when the Canadiens played an exhibition team against his team the Chicoutimi Hockey Club. They actually BEAT Montreal, shutting them out, and the Canadiens offered him a contract - which he initially refused, because he couldn’t be bothered to move to Montreal for a contract that even then wasn’t significantly different than what you’d make working in a factory.
Can that happen today? Well, of course not. It’s impossible. Imagine today’s Montreal Canadiens playing an exhibition match against some intercounty club, losing, and finding out the other team had some unknown goalie who was NHL calibre. It’s inconceivable.
In, say, 1930, there were more NHL calibre players in club and semi-pro hockey in Canada than there were in the NHL. I assure you that is not the case today - and now we draw not just from Canada, but from the USA, Finland, Russia, Sweden, Czech-land, et al.
Double sigh;
The talent was enormous and it was severely concentrated. Hockey was huge in Canada, and all the players were born there. They moved to play in the NHL or nowhere else.
While there are players from around the world now, there are lots of NHL teams. There are also pro leagues in several European countries. they have lots of options. Back then, there was only one.
This was my era. Hockey was extremely well played. My wings had Abel, Lindsey and Howe. Goalies were terrific . Defense was top notch.
Harold Ballard. He ran the Maple Leafs into the ground, and was inducted as a builder even after he had served jail time for embezzling money from the team.
Is it really? Incredibly unlikely, sure, but not inconceivable and certainly not impossible. Jonas Hiller was an undrafted kid playing in Switzerland and only signed a North American pro contract at the age of 25 (Anaheim Ducks, in 2007*). I won’t make any claims that he’s HOF calibre, but he’s clearly NHL caliber. The Habs currently are playing undrafted Josh Gorges, David Desharnais, Mathieu Darche.
Are they “unknowns”? No - they probably fit in somewhere on the bottom of scouting reports, but a few of them end up better than expected.
I acknowledge your point and feel you’re generally right, but I think calling it “impossible” and “inconceivable” is too strong.
I also just like the idea of some kid coming out of nowhere and tearing the league up 
(*yes, I just learned most of that while reading an article about his vertigo…!)
ETA: well, the Habs playing some other league’s team is perhaps inconceivable…
Being “undrafted,” and coming out of (essentially) a beer league as I hear RickJay describe it is another thing entirely. As per the Vezina example, at least in rural Quebec, I think anyone who’s even ECHL worthy has caught the eyes of some scouts somewhere along his junior career. Switzerland, like Hiller? Even there, anyone who plays hockey at a high enough calibre just to be in the discussion comes from European pro leagues, or even U.S. NCAA hockey like Stefan Da Costa and Jarkko Ruutu. Heck, Jonas Hiller won two spengler cups; I think that makes him a certifiable pro goalie in a thirty team NHL’s farm system, if not higher.
So yeah, I’m going to share the strong language and vote “impossible,” as well. 
Sorry, but Gillies was a terrific player on the greatest dynasty in hockey history.
I remember when George Armstrong got elected, Stan Fischler ragged about how mediocre he was. Also for coaches, while Roger Neilson did help innovate the use of videotape (even though he once mistook a microwave for a television), does he really belong while Pat Burns and Fred Shero are out?
Harold Ballard has to be the worst, followed by Chicago’s owner Bill Wirtz. Alan Eagleson resigned after people finally figured out he was a crook (the Canadian media ignored the story for years).
What!?
The worst players in the HOF would be Angela James and Cammi Granato.
They are not the worst NHL players because they never played in the NHL.
I’m still going to stick with highly improbable. Life’s just more fun that way! 
Yeah, and he was a so-so player that happened to be on the ride for that dynasty. Bob Nystrom and Stefan Persson were “terrific players” on that cup streak, were they not?
I’ll side with Jim’s Son on this…Nystrom & Persson were good players…Gillies was terrific - the perfect balance of offensive skills and physical toughness. He lost a step near the end of their run, and was moved off of the Trots/Bossy line for balance, but he scored 30+ goals earlier in each of the '75-'79 seasons before the Cups.
As far as the dynasty goes, note that the Isles had 19 straight playoff series wins. No one else is even close - in any sport.
Immediately preceding the Islanders’ fourt straight, Montreal won four straight. During those four yhears their records were:
59-11-11, 127 points
60-8-12, 132 points - this team scored 387 goals and allowed just 171
59-10-11, 129 points
52-17-11, 115 points
Four in a row is four in a row, and the 1976-1977 team was, in my opinion, the best hockey team in the history of the league. I don’t think one can conclusively state the Islanders dynasty was better.