Now, consider that Mark Howe had to wait 16 years after retirement to enter the Hall of Fame. Here is his top-10 Norris record (didn't start NHL until age 24):
2, 2, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 10
Now, Mark Howe was a fabulous player but I agree with the Hall that he is a "borderline" Hall of Famer. That is the correct standard.
I think this starts to zero in on what pisses me off so much about the direction the HHOF is going. Here you have an institution that keeps
really great players on the outside for decades at a time... which is totally fine if the bar is just so high that few can get in quickly. But at the same time, you've got guys who weren't even considered stars
while they were playing, jumping ahead of that line for induction.
Howe made it in the same year as Nieuwendyk, and a lot of the impact of Howe finally making it was taken up by an outcry that a player as weak as Nieuwendyk could make it. Karlamov was dead for 24 years before he got in, and they shoved Cam Neely in there with him. Those outrages seem almost naive in comparison with the past few years.
And the pattern seems to be getting worse. Just in the past 20 years we have Mullen, Gartner, Gillies, Neely, Duff, Anderson, Ciccarelli, Nieuwendyk, Housley, Andreychuk, Carbonneau. That's an entire tier of undistinguished players who are now the entry standard for whole future generations of Ryan O'Reillys and Kris Letangs. In some cases it's hard to distinguish whether the problem is "old boys" overfamiliarity with the candidates, or "I'm just here for the post-vote cocktails" lack of curiosity beyond what can be seen on a stat sheet.
I dunno, man. It's a sad thing to watch this happen year-over-year. I guess there's a point where the place simply stops becoming something magical like the Baseball HOF and you just accept that it's a museum in a food court and not much more.
