The Hall of Fame of Hall of Fame classes

Some induction years have a little more quality than others, so let's take a look at the 10 greatest Hall of Fame classes of all-time...plus Situational Scoring is back

The Hockey Hall of Fame Class of 2023.

Note: Sitting here on a Sunday night, Day 4 of the worst sinus cold I’ve had in, like, forever. So, since I couldn’t actually attend any of the Hockey Hall of Fame festivities, I thought I would rank my top 10 Hall of Fame players’ classes of all-time. If there are any egregious omissions or errors, blame it on the Benylin.

Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with the Hockey Hall of Fame’s players’ Class of 2023, but let’s face it, the wow factor is a little lacking. If you were ranking classes of the Hall of Fame, it wouldn’t even be in the top 20. But nobody actually does stuff like that, do they? All the more reason to give it a go.

With that, I present the top 12 Hall of Fame classes of all-time. Players only. And one caveat. In the spirit of fairness, I measured it based on the four best players in the class. The reason for that is the Hall wasn’t established until 1945 and in its first induction years, it had four-plus decades of catching up to do. So the classes were massive. For example, in 1962, 26 players were inducted. According to the Hall of Fame’s website, 27 were inducted. But hockey historian Eric Zweig, who knows everything about this stuff, insists Nels Stewart was inducted in 1952, but is listed in 1962 and the Hall has never bothered to change it. Even with Stewart, who was at one time the NHL’s all-time leading scorer, 1962 would not have made the cut.

Here are the 10 that did:

1.     1972: Jean Beliveau, Gordie Howe, Boom-Boom Geoffrion, Hap Holmes

This class includes the greatest players ever to play for two of the league’s most storied franchises. And, yes, when all was said and done, Beliveau was superior to Rocket Richard in every way, despite the fact I wrote a book in 2008 called Habs Heroes, which ranked Richard as the greatest Montreal Canadien of all-time. But that was based on the results of two expert panels. Howe, incidentally, became the first player in NHL history to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, then return to the NHL as a player. Guy Lafleur and Mario Lemieux are the others. Had the Hall waited until he retired, Howe would have been in the Class of 1980.

2.     2009: Brett Hull, Brian Leetch, Luc Robitaille, Steve Yzerman

With a total of 2,348 goals, 3,220 assists and 5,568 points, this foursome spent its career terrorizing goalies. It also has two of the greatest American players of all-time. (Hull was born in Canada, but played for USA internationally.)

3.     1979: Harry Howell, Bobby Orr, Henri Richard

Howell won the Norris Trophy in 1968, then Orr won the next eight of them en route to becoming the greatest defenceman in the history of the game. (Some maintain the greatest player. I am not one of them.) All Richard did was win 11 Stanley Cups, the most by any player in NHL history.

4.     1961: Syl Apps, Charlie Conacher, Maurice Richard, Milt Schmidt

Between the two of them, Richard and Conacher led the NHL goals a total of 10 times. He’ll likely be usurped, but Conacher is the greatest Toronto Maple Leaf of all-time and most would argue Richard is the greatest Canadien. This class also included George Hainsworth, but we could only include four.

5.     1999: Wayne Gretzky

Let’s face it, The Great One could have been inducted along with Bob Pulford, Herbie Lewis, Dick Duff, Bernie Federko and Clark Gillies and it still would have been one of the all-time great classes.

6.     1945: Eddie Gerard, Frank McGee, Howie Morenz, Georges Vezina

The Hall’s first-ever class of inductees included players who were some of the first superstars of the game. McGee, who was killed in World War I, was the cornerstone of the Ottawa Senators, one of the first super teams in NHL history. Morenz was referred to as ‘the Babe Ruth of hockey’ and was the Canadiens’ first superstar. Vezina’s career was tragically ended by tuberculosis and Gerard would have won a couple of Norris Trophies had it existed when he played.

7.     1947: Dit Clapper, Aurel Joliat, Eddie Shore, Cyclone Taylor

Clapper and Shore make up one the greatest defence tandems in NHL history. Taylor was one of the game’s first superstars and Joliat was an undersized star in the 1920s and ’30s.

8.     2004: Raymond Bourque, Paul Coffey, Larry Murphy

It is an all-time great class, but it’s also the greatest group of defenceman to enter the Hall in a single year. You can argue Murphy’s credentials if you want, but you’d look ridiculous if you did. The guy is still the highest-scoring rookie defenceman in history and was a key cog on four Stanley Cup winners.

9.     2007: Ron Francis, Al MacInnis, Mark Messier, Scott Stevens

How would you have like to play against these guys? It was no fun skating through the neutral zone with the puck when Stevens was out there, nor was it a walk in the park to go into the corner with Messier. Stand in front of a MacInnis shot? No, thanks. And being shut down by Francis, then watching him score on your line, not pleasant. And all four of them had off-the-charts skill.

10.  2015: Sergei Fedorov, Nicklas Lidstrom, Chris Pronger, Angela Ruggiero

This group consists of one of the greatest two-way players of all-time (Fedorov), the greatest European player of ever and probably the best defenceman in the game not named Bobby Orr (Lidstrom), a Hart Trophy winner (Pronger) and one of the greatest defenders in women’s hockey history (Ruggiero). It also featured Phil Housley, but I had to keep it to four.

It pained me greatly to keep a couple of classes of the list, starting with 2014 (Rob Blake, Dominik Hasek, Peter Forsberg and Mike Modano), 2013 (Chris Chelios, Geraldine Heaney, Scott Niedermayer, Brendan Shanahan) and 1983 (Ken Dryden, Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita).

FUN WITH NUMBERS - SITUATIONAL SCORING

I’m not even sure whether people enjoy looking at this, but I enjoy compiling it, so Hockey Unfiltered’s Situational Scoring Race is back for another season. What makes it different from every other stat out there is that it tracks only the important points, the ones that matter. Garbage points need not apply.

As always, there are a couple of things to note, the most important being that goals are weighted more heavily than assists, with goals worth one point and assists worth half a point. In this system, goals can be worth more than one point and assists worth more than a half a point. For example, the first goal of a game is automatically worth two points, one for being the first goal of the game and one for putting that player’s team ahead in a game. An overtime goal is worth three, one for putting the team ahead, one for being the game-winner and one for the overtime goal. If that is the only goal in a 1-0 game, it’s worth four.

It can all be a little confusing, so here’s a glossary:

FIRST: When a player scores the first goal of the game.
AHEAD: Any goal that puts a team ahead at any point in the game, including overtime.
TIED: Any goal that pulls a team into a tie at any point in the game.
COMEBACK: A goal that is scored when a team is trailing by two goals or more and is part of a series of goals that eventually ties the game, regardless of the ultimate outcome of the game.
WINNER: A game-winning goal, but not by the NHL’s definition. The game-winner in this category is the goal that puts a team ahead in a game to stay. So in other words, you could have a 7-6 game and maybe the first goal of the game was the game-winner.
OT: Overtime goal.
SO: Only shootout game-winning goals are counted in this category.
NHL: Where the player stands in the actual NHL scoring race.

You’re not going to find the likes of Cole Caufield, Pavel Zacha, Nick Bjugstad or Vincent Trocheck in the league’s top 25 scorers, but they’re there in Situational Scoring. That’s what makes this stat fun.

DRIBS AND DRABS

There’s a term scouts use to define middle-of-the-road prospects. They refer to them as JAGs- just a guy. That’s what I feel like about whomever coaches the Edmonton Oilers. It doesn’t matter who they put behind the bench, the superstars seem to run the show there. And this season, they’ve run it into the ground. Kris Knoblauch had better be prepared to start making people accountable for their play in Edmonton, or this team is going nowhere…In the Ontario Hockey League, the objective is to be the best team in the league after the trade deadline. This all could go sideways, but you have to be impressed with the Peterborough Petes and Mississauga Steelheads, who are at the top of their divisions a quarter of the way through the season in what is supposed to be a rebuilding year for each…Go to the head of the class and collect your gold star if you predicted Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Erik Gustafsson and Radko Gudas would be among the best free-agent signings in the summer…Mikko Rantanen was supposed to call me on Sunday for a story I’m doing on him for The Hockey News. I can see why he might not have been in the mood to talk. The Avalanche have won two of their past seven and been outscored 31-15. Rantanen, though, is on his way to his second straight 50-goal season.