Who Will Be The Next Retired 500+ Goal Scorer To Be Inducted Into The Hockey Hall Of Fame?

Who Will Be The Next Retired 500+ Goal Scorer To Be Inducted Into The Hockey Hall Of Fame?


  • Total voters
    18
Status
Not open for further replies.

The Roy Of Ottawa

HOCKEY HALL OF FAME
Oct 4, 2017
861
212
Who Will Be The Next Retired 500+ Goal Scorer To Be Inducted Into The Hockey Hall Of Fame?

01. Keith Tkachuk (538) - Eligible since 2013
02. Pat Verbeek (522) - Eligible since 2005
03. Pierre Turgeon (515) - Eligible since 2010
04. Jeremy Roenick (513) - Eligible since 2012
05. Peter Bondra (503) - Eligible since 2010

Do you think there will ever be a year when there are no retired 500+ goal scorers available for induction?

ACTIVE 500+ GOAL SCORERS

01. Jaromir Jagr (766)
02. Jarome Iginla (625)
03. Alexander Ovechkin (607)
04. Patrick Marleau (535)
05. Marian Hossa (525)
 
Last edited:

Kyle McMahon

Registered User
May 10, 2006
13,301
4,352
No, I don't think any such year will exist. Even with the selection committee's apparent inability to quantify raw career numbers, I just can't see Pat Verbeek making the Hall of Fame.

Honestly, I think Roenick gets in. The Hall has been pretty gung-ho to induct three of four players per year, and the weak late 90's draft classes are going to leave some pretty slim pickings over the next few years if they continue along the more the merrier tract. They'll reach back to the previous generation to fill some of the void. Roenick has remained in the game as a high-profile analyst, and his reputation has aged well IMO. He was considered brash and boorish in his time, but is remembered 20 years later as a more endearing "colourful character".

His buddy Tkachuk is still remembered as a dink though. Didn't think he had much chance of making the HOF when he retired, don't think he has much of a chance now.

Bondra was too low profile and pre-Ovechkin Washington was too anonymous of a market for him to have a serious chance. Little in the way of "Fame" as it pertains to him. I'll suggest though, as I did recently in another thread, that if Bondra had the exact same career that started 10 years earlier, he probably has a high enough raw goal total to sneak in.

I won't rule out Turgeon. Eventually the day is going to come when the committee simply sees 1300+ career points and wonders why they overlooked him. Either they'll recall that practically nobody felt he was HOF-bound when he retired, or they'll be mesmerized by the stats (again).
 

The Roy Of Ottawa

HOCKEY HALL OF FAME
Oct 4, 2017
861
212
Don't be surprised if Bondra gets in first, because of the passing of Bryan Murray this year. Bondra and Murray were both with the Washington Capitals and Ottawa Senators.
 

The Roy Of Ottawa

HOCKEY HALL OF FAME
Oct 4, 2017
861
212
Please explain what is wrong with Pat Verbeek. No one is voting for him. What did he do wrong as a player? He'll be inducted someday, anyway, because all 500+ goal scorers eventually are.
 
  • Like
Reactions: HawkNut

Kyle McMahon

Registered User
May 10, 2006
13,301
4,352
Please explain what is wrong with Pat Verbeek. No one is voting for him. What did he do wrong as a player? He'll be inducted someday, anyway, because all 500+ goal scorers eventually are.

Somebody old enough to remember the first half of his career can comment better than myself, but I'd have to think those PIM totals are excessive to the point that he was probably hurting his team at some points.

Verbeek is not a HOF player. Maybe you could argue he was a top 5 player at his position in a couple of his very best seasons. For the style of player he was, his playoff resume is pretty mediocre. Decent secondary piece on the '99 Stars, little to speak of otherwise.

I can't predict the future, but neither can you. "All 500 goal scorers eventually get inducted" is not an argument. There are no 500 goal scorers that "eventually got in". Ciccarelli and Andreychuk are both over 600. Every single other 500+ goal scorer got in soon after retirement.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ResilientBeast

Canadiens1958

Registered User
Nov 30, 2007
20,020
2,773
Lake Memphremagog, QC.
Somebody old enough to remember the first half of his career can comment better than myself, but I'd have to think those PIM totals are excessive to the point that he was probably hurting his team at some points.

Verbeek is not a HOF player. Maybe you could argue he was a top 5 player at his position in a couple of his very best seasons. For the style of player he was, his playoff resume is pretty mediocre. Decent secondary piece on the '99 Stars, little to speak of otherwise.

I can't predict the future, but neither can you. "All 500 goal scorers eventually get inducted" is not an argument. There are no 500 goal scorers that "eventually got in". Ciccarelli and Andreychuk are both over 600. Every single other 500+ goal scorer got in soon after retirement.

Not in to date because he was a defensive liability. First half of his career he was a player who was acceptable until an improvement came along.

Later he filled the niche of a depth scorer on strong defensive teams - Dallas and Detroit.
 

Kyle McMahon

Registered User
May 10, 2006
13,301
4,352
Not in to date because he was a defensive liability. First half of his career he was a player who was acceptable until an improvement came along.

Later he filled the niche of a depth scorer on strong defensive teams - Dallas and Detroit.

That he was traded at age 25 for the oft-injured Sylvain Turgeon, who was three years removed from his last good season, is revealing, unless there are other circumstances I am not aware of that necessitated a trade.
 

HawkNut

Registered User
Jun 12, 2017
725
298
Unpopular opinion: I would put every 500 goal scorer in the Hall of Fame.
 

The Panther

Registered User
Mar 25, 2014
19,110
15,573
Tokyo, Japan
I don't understand this desire to put every Tom, Dick, and Harry who did anything into the Hall of Fame. The inevitable result of that mentality is a cheapening of the worth of Hall of Fame admission.

The Hall of Fame should be only for the very best players, the most elite at their positions, the truly memorable.

Verbeek was a very good one-dimensional sniper, with no significant career achievements (other than goal-compiling). Not once was he ever top-10 in goals, assists, or points. He was feisty, took a lot of penalties. He's a career -44. He basically disappeared in the playoffs, as during his 20s he managed 9 goals in 40 games in a high-scoring era. (Overall he scored 26 goals in 117 playoff games.) He did at least win a Stanley Cup with Dallas as a 2nd or 3rd-line player with 3 goals in 18 games, so that should have absolutely zero impact in his Hall of Fame credentials.

In any case, it's a terrible idea to make a rule such as "anyone with ___ goals gets in automatically", for reasons that should be obvious.
 

Theokritos

Global Moderator
Apr 6, 2010
12,538
4,911
Unpopular opinion: I would put every 500 goal scorer in the Hall of Fame.

You and the OP.

IMHO it's not so much unpopular as straight up unreasonable to use a set number (like 500 goals) as a HOF benchmark. It neither takes into consideration how scoring level changes over time nor how long it took a player to reach that number.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Epsilon

HawkNut

Registered User
Jun 12, 2017
725
298
You and the OP.

IMHO it's not so much unpopular as straight up unreasonable to use a set number (like 500 goals) as a HOF benchmark. It neither takes into consideration how scoring level changes over time nor how long it took a player to reach that number.

Not really. Baseball does this. How long it took should not matter as long as it happened. Longevity and compiling should be rewarded, not punished.
 

The Roy Of Ottawa

HOCKEY HALL OF FAME
Oct 4, 2017
861
212
You and the OP.

IMHO it's not so much unpopular as straight up unreasonable to use a set number (like 500 goals) as a HOF benchmark. It neither takes into consideration how scoring level changes over time nor how long it took a player to reach that number.

Keith Tkachuk: 500th goal in 16th of 18 seasons
Pat Verbeek: 500th goal in 19th of 20 seasons
Pierre Turgeon: 500th goal in 17th of 18 seasons
Jeremy Roenick: 500th goal in 19th of 20 seasons
Peter Bondra: 500th goal in 16th of 16 seasons

And for those of you who like to complain about Dave Andreychuk…

23 Seasons

500th goal in season number 17
600th goal in season number 21

To be fair

Wayne Gretzky…

500th goal in season 8
600th goal in season 10
700th goal in season 12
800th goal in season 15
894th goal in season 20
 
Last edited:

Hockey Outsider

Registered User
Jan 16, 2005
9,056
13,985
Peter Bondra was the quickest to get to 500 goals. He should be inducted next.

Bondra was a great goal scorer (seven year VsX puts him on par with Selanne, Lafleur, Yzerman and Kovalchuk - which feels about right).

But I wouldn't put him in the Hall. Because he wasn't a great playmaker, his overall offensive production was surprisingly low (he never finished in the top ten in scoring, and only placed in the top twenty twice).

He wasn't anything special defensively (though he played a fair bit on the PK and racked up shorthanded goals).

He only had one year with a non-trivial number of Hart votes. He never placed higher than 4th in all-star voting.

His playoff numbers (30 goals and 56 points in 80 games) are disappointing for a player of his calibre. He only made it out of the first round three times, and out of the second round once (1998 - when he was decent but not great, and missed some time to injuries).
 

Kyle McMahon

Registered User
May 10, 2006
13,301
4,352
Not really. Baseball does this. How long it took should not matter as long as it happened. Longevity and compiling should be rewarded, not punished.

Baseball has had a regular season schedule long enough to make career counting stats relatively comparable for ~120 years. Hockey had schedules too short for any player to possibly score a similar amount of career goals/points to a modern equivalent for a significant portion of history.

Baseball has also not seen the wild fluctuations in scoring that hockey has. A guy playing in 1920 didn't have appreciably less opportunity to record 3000 career hits than a guy playing in 1960 or 2010. 500 goals or 1000 points were much more attainable for players that entered the NHL between approximately 1975 and 1990 than for players from any other point in history.

Longevity and compiling are not the same thing. Longevity should be and is rewarded. Compiling is something that looks nice on the back of a hockey card.
 

GlitchMarner

Typical malevolent, devious & vile Maple Leafs fan
Jul 21, 2017
9,712
6,432
Brampton, ON
Bondra was a great goal scorer (seven year VsX puts him on par with Selanne, Lafleur, Yzerman and Kovalchuk - which feels about right).

But I wouldn't put him in the Hall. Because he wasn't a great playmaker, his overall offensive production was surprisingly low (he never finished in the top ten in scoring, and only placed in the top twenty twice).

He wasn't anything special defensively (though he played a fair bit on the PK and racked up shorthanded goals).

He only had one year with a non-trivial number of Hart votes. He never placed higher than 4th in all-star voting.

His playoff numbers (30 goals and 56 points in 80 games) are disappointing for a player of his calibre. He only made it out of the first round three times, and out of the second round once (1998 - when he was decent but not great, and missed some time to injuries).

Bondra is more or less the Rick Nash of his time, no?

LeClair was better than Bondra and he's not in the HHOF.
 

Ishdul

Registered User
Jan 20, 2007
3,989
144
Not really. Baseball does this. How long it took should not matter as long as it happened. Longevity and compiling should be rewarded, not punished.
Obviously a fair bit of this is steroids related but they haven't put all of the 500 HR hitters in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Right now it's 18 of the 27 in, with 3 yet to be eligible (and I would expect major pushback on A-Rod). It's also a relatively higher bar to clear, with 27 people on that list as opposed to 45 500 goal scorers. If you were putting in the top 45 HR hitters in baseball history it would include: Fred McGriff, Carlos Delgado, Adam Dunn, Dave Kingman, Paul Konerko. Meanwhile, none of the guys you listed would be in the top 27 of goal scoring. It makes sense as a statistical cut off since its 550 goals.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kyle McMahon
Status
Not open for further replies.

Ad

Upcoming events

Ad

Ad

-->