Jeff Skinner HOF

[nabby12]

Brutal thread.

Skinner likely ends with 420-450 goals too. And obviously isn't a HOF-caliber player.

Stick to hockey history stuff, @seventieslord.

 

[Neutrinos]

1st ballot

 

[Nick Hansen]

Not even close and won't be regardless if he happens to age nicely.

 

[VaporTrail]

Sabres fan here...that thought has never even remotely crossed my mind

 

[Hobnobs]

For starters, I'm not advocating Jeff Skinner gets into the HOF. But the HOF has shown that they love career totals without context, and certain goal milestones apparently make you automatic. I'm creating this thread to warn you all that "Jeff Skinner HOF" talk may start in just a few short years.

Sure, a lot has to go right for him. But he is just 31 (!!!) years old and has somehow compiled 350 goals, which is the 8th highest total since he entered the league. He goes hot and cold, but he just had two very good seasons, scoring is going up and he's on a supposedly emerging Buffalo team with a contract that pays him for three more seasons and virtually ensures he will continue to get prime scoring opportunities.

I think he's a lock to get 500 goals. There may even be a universe in which he flirts with 600. It's within the realm of possibility that he puts up 40 in each of the next two seasons and has 450 when he turns 34. What if he ages like Ray Whitney? or Joe Pavelski? Couldn't he average 25 goals a year for ten more years?

I mean he will never have a HOF skill set (poor defensively, softish) and won't have a HOF career (zero playoff games to date). He will likely never even have a HOF point total, but that's a HOF goal total he could reach, and who knows if that is all it would take for some people. He's never even been known as one of the game's best goal scorers, one sixth place finish in 2017 notwithstanding. But we might one day be saying he and Stamkos are the only 550 goal scorers between Crosby and McDavid

Scary, hey?

I thought someone had necro bumped a thread you made while drunk posting 10 years ago...

 

[MS]

There’s a better chance Skinner doesn’t make it to 400 than that he gets to 500.

 

[MXD]

For starters, I'm not advocating Jeff Skinner gets into the HOF. But the HOF has shown that they love career totals without context, and certain goal milestones apparently make you automatic. I'm creating this thread to warn you all that "Jeff Skinner HOF" talk may start in just a few short years.

Sure, a lot has to go right for him. But he is just 31 (!!!) years old and has somehow compiled 350 goals, which is the 8th highest total since he entered the league. He goes hot and cold, but he just had two very good seasons, scoring is going up and he's on a supposedly emerging Buffalo team with a contract that pays him for three more seasons and virtually ensures he will continue to get prime scoring opportunities.

I think he's a lock to get 500 goals. There may even be a universe in which he flirts with 600. It's within the realm of possibility that he puts up 40 in each of the next two seasons and has 450 when he turns 34. What if he ages like Ray Whitney? or Joe Pavelski? Couldn't he average 25 goals a year for ten more years?

I mean he will never have a HOF skill set (poor defensively, softish) and won't have a HOF career (zero playoff games to date). He will likely never even have a HOF point total, but that's a HOF goal total he could reach, and who knows if that is all it would take for some people. He's never even been known as one of the game's best goal scorers, one sixth place finish in 2017 notwithstanding. But we might one day be saying he and Stamkos are the only 550 goal scorers between Crosby and McDavid

Scary, hey?

That's a respectful laugh emoji by the way.

 

[GlitchMarner]

If he does score 500 goals (I don't think he will), he won't really be taken more seriously as a HOF candidate than a guy like Pat Verbeek.

Verbeek at least had some feistiness and nastiness to his game. Once in a while someone might put his name near the bottom of a list of players who may or "should" make the HOF, but there isn't really any clamoring to have him inducted.

 

[MadLuke]

With all my skepticism that I said, the list of player with most goals since he entered the league

Ovechkin
Stamkos
Tavares
Marchand
Crosby
Pavelski
Kane
Matthews
*Skinner*
Benn
Seguin
Malkin

In goal per games, at least 400 games, he is around #35 with not that impressive name around him, starting strong at 18 being a significant part of his possibility to accumulate.

The way Pavelski is going, can evreyone above him end up in the HOF ?

 

[Dubi Doo]

For all the talk about this Buffalo team being emerging, I think as long as they keep deploying Skinner as any type of serious centre piece (meaning 1st line duties, 1st PP duties), they're going to keep struggle, or just keep treading very mediocre waters. As has been noted up thread he's bad defensively, easy to push around, fairly inconsistent (meaning disappearance acts), and I would add just the prototypical bad team scorer.

There was a blip somewhere around the middle of this season where Jack Quinn came back from injury (before re-injuring himself) where that team actually started to look semi-serious again, but it was a fairly short sequence.

I read somewhere, might have been on this board, that the first thing Brind'Amour did when he took over Carolina was getting rid of Skinner. I don't know how much of that is true, but it sounds true, and it seems to make a lot of sense.

There was also some thread here (on HOH) not long ago talking about the player with the most RS games and no playoffs, and I think someone said he could be traded to a contender (why would a contender want Skinner) or something (a better team I guess), but I think Skinner actually nixed a move away from Buffalo during the Krueger days (when he was in veritable dog-house) because Buffalo is so close to his hometown Toronto. So that seems to be what we're dealing with here.

As a Sabres fan, Skinner being part of the team for the next few years is looking to be gigantic crater for the roster. He's been pretty bad by all accounts, and some are questioning whether father time is to blame. He's always been terrible defensively, but now skating seems to be slowing down, and that's a sobering thought.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

With all my skepticism that I said, the list of player with most goals since he entered the league

Ovechkin
Stamkos
Tavares
Marchand
Crosby
Pavelski
Kane
Matthews
*Skinner*
Benn
Seguin
Malkin

In goal per games, at least 400 games, he is around #35, starting strong at 18 being a significant part of his possibility to accumulate.

The way pavelski is going, can evreyone above him end up in the HOF ?

Thinking more on it and seeing your post, brings up an idea.

Skinner may very well be the best example/definition of a compiler we've had. (I'd argue its Marleau but people will say "but the games played record" in his defense) No one can make a legitimate case that Skinner's stats and career totals, which will end up near or above the "HOF threshold" are in any way representative of the level of player he is

 

[wetcoast]

Assuming the Sabres miss the playoffs this year, he'll have played over 1000 regular season games with zero playoff games.

That's a pretty hot take, sure you want to go out on a limb?

 

[mrhockey193195]

A lot of people in this thread seem pretty confident, but I'm with @seventieslord . I'm terrified. I can totally imagine the conversation 7 or 8 years from now where the hockey establishment campaigns for Skinner to be a HOFer.

I think the saving grace (thus far) is that he has literally no record in the playoffs.

 

[Voight]

That's a pretty hot take, sure you want to go out on a limb?

Gotta roll the dice sometimes

 

[Sadekuuro]

If he does score 500 goals (I don't think he will), he won't really be taken more seriously as a HOF candidate than a guy like Pat Verbeek.

Verbeek at least had some feistiness and nastiness to his game. Once in a while someone might put his name near the bottom of a list of players who may or "should" make the HOF, but there isn't really any clamoring to have him inducted.

Almost nobody thinks Peter Bondra should be in either, and he even led in the league in goals (twice).

 

[Cas]

I feel like this is the hockey equivalent of "Nick Markakis is on pace to get 3000 hits by the time he's 40, will he be elected to the HOF?"

 

[HisIceness]

Skinners rookie year was fun as a Hurricanes fan. It was also his peak here. Unfortunately the team in general ruined what should have been a fun season at the end.

Long story short, if the team had not gone full dumbass and instead won that game 82 (Win and they are in the playoffs) vs a Lightning team with nothing to play for, maybe Skinner wins the Conn Symthe. Okay most likely not but you can't prove he wouldn't have! But at the very least he'd have 4 playoff games under his belt.

 

[Crosby2010]

I assume this is one of those "I don't think it but could the HHOF committee and media be that idiotic". And to answer that question, yes they can. But I am thinking with Skinner that's even too much for them to explain away. Pavelski is not a HHOFer either and he is miles better than Skinner. One year of 82 points and then his next highest total was 63 a surprising amount of 4 times, he must like that number. But if no one is pushing Pat Verbeek to get in, the least likely 500 goal man, then no one will think about Skinner either who is still 150 away.

Besides, there are plenty of guys who hit 400+ goals that we'd never dream of inducting. Steve Thomas, Jason Arnott, Gary Unger, Ray Ferraro, Shane Doan, John Ogrodnick............the list goes on. John MacLean, Phil Kessel (he at least would be a John Tonelli-type of consideration as a guy who was integral on championship teams),

Then there are guys around 450 or higher who were pretty good that aren't in. Middleton, Nicholls, Larmer, Fleury, Vaive, Bellows, etc. You get it. And of the names mentioned, Skinner is not equal to any of them I don't think. And you can argue Fleury and maybe Middleton deserve the HHOF, but they are about more than just their goal totals too.

I had to do a double take, Skinner has a bit of a Guy Charron like career where he hasn't played in a playoff game yet. I know there has to be more to the story than just you, but at the end of the day if you've been in the NHL 14 years and not made the playoffs then you need to ask yourself why and how much of it is you and what more you could do. As for goal totals, there are current players like Claude Giroux and Tyler Seguin who are much better players that are much more deserving. Seguin won't make it, but we'll see with Giroux.

 

[JianYang]

Even the 500 goal plateau is not an automatic ticket to the hall. Yes, it almost automatic, but if all you have is star compiling argument with little else, it's still not automatic.

I think he will end up maybe on the ray Ferraro level when all is said and done.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Even the 500 goal plateau is not an automatic ticket to the hall. Yes, it almost automatic, but if all you have is star compiling argument with little else, it's still not automatic.

I think he will end up maybe on the ray Ferraro level when all is said and done.

except ray ferraro was the key forward in the greatest playoff upset of all time and jeff skinner has done literally nothing in the playoffs

 

[Terry Yake]

Thinking more on it and seeing your post, brings up an idea.

Skinner may very well be the best example/definition of a compiler we've had. (I'd argue its Marleau but people will say "but the games played record" in his defense) No one can make a legitimate case that Skinner's stats and career totals, which will end up near or above the "HOF threshold" are in any way representative of the level of player he is

i can't envision skinner out-compiling marleau or andreychuk (the two GOAT compilers)

 

[bobholly39]

Since entering the league he averages 55 points per 82 games

Even with 600 longevity goals he wouldn't make it. And he won't actually be scoring 600 goals.

 

[Golden_Jet]

He won’t get to 500 goals, and definitely not in HHOF.

 

[JianYang]

except ray ferraro was the key forward in the greatest playoff upset of all time and jeff skinner has done literally nothing in the playoffs

I mean from a stat compiling standpoint. Skinner I'm guessing will be closer to 400 than 500 when the career is all said and done, and neither have or will be considered for the hall.

 

[NyQuil]

If he had played for the Montreal Canadiens in the 70s and 80s, or his cottage was just down the road from Lanny's, absolutely he'd be considered.