There are 18 men who decide who gets into the Hockey Hall of Fame. They are good men, all of them.
The list includes brilliant hockey minds such as Scotty Bowman and Bill Torrey. It includes former superstars such as Luc Robitaille and Igor Larionov. It includes knowledgeable media members such as broadcaster Mike Emrick and longtime Sports Illustrated writer Michael Farber.
These 18 men know the sport. They know the history of the game. The job they have been assigned is not an easy one, and they take that job very seriously.
Their reputations are beyond reproach.
Okay, now that the niceties are out of the way, let's get straight to it:
These 18 men botched things.
Again.
On Monday, former Lightning captain Dave Andreychuk was again denied entrance to the Hall of Fame, and until he is in, it's hard to take the hall seriously.
It's shameful that he wasn't in the hall already. With each passing year — and this is now the seventh time Andreychuk has been denied — you start to doubt that he will ever get in.
What, exactly, is the committee thinking? Why hasn't Andreychuk gotten the call?
It's always nice to have a long list of awards and accolades and titles on your resume, but when it comes to Andreychuk and his resume, there's only one thing that should matter:
His big pile of goals.
Andreychuk is one of the best in NHL history at scoring goals, and isn't that what the sport is about? Putting the biscuit in the basket?
That alone should have someone clearing out a spot for him in Toronto as you read this.
In the history of the NHL, 18 players have scored 600 or more goals. All are in the Hall of Fame except three, and two of them — Jaromir Jagr and Teemu Selanne — aren't eligible yet.
The other is Andreychuk.
As if that weren't enough, there's this: Andreychuk's 274 power-play goals are the most in league history. When you're No. 1 in a goal-scoring category and your name is not Gretzky, that's saying something.
Here's even more: His 640 goals are 14th on the all-time list and more than Hall of Famers such as Joe Sakic, Bobby Hull and Jari Kurri. His 1,338 points are more than Hall of Famers such as Denis Savard and Gilbert Perreault. They're more than Hall of Famers Bobby Clarke and Peter Stastny, two men who are on the voting committee.
Usually when a player has such lofty numbers, there's some other reason why he isn't in the hall. The first inclination is to think that maybe the voters have it in for him, but Andreychuk's classy reputation on and off the ice makes that a silly notion. Andreychuk is widely regarded as good people, and proof is that he's the Lightning's community ambassador.
Sometimes a player is penalized because he isn't seen as a winner, but that's not the case, either. Not only was Andreychuk a member of the 2004 Stanley Cup champion Lightning, he was the captain. His teams made the playoffs 18 times, and his 162 playoff games are the equivalent of two full NHL seasons.
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Explore all your optionsSo what gives?
Well, it would appear that Andreychuk's longevity is the issue. He compiled so many goals, many believe, only because he played such a long time. He spent 23 seasons in the league. His 1,639 games played are the sixth most in NHL history.
But wait. Shouldn't he be applauded and appreciated for that? Shouldn't we have added respect for a player who stayed healthy enough to play long enough at a high enough level that he kept getting work? Since when is being a very good player for a very long time a bad thing?
Andreychuk scored 38 goals as a 20-year-old and 21 as a 40-year-old. He had 19 seasons when he scored at least 20 goals. That's remarkable reliability.
But voters prefer flashes of greatness over long-term consistency.
What hurts Andreychuk is he was never, at any point in his career, considered one of the top five or 10 players in the game. He appeared in only two All-Star Games. He never led the league in scoring. Most of his goals were what hockey people would call "ugly'' or "garbage goals'' — rebounds from just outside the crease or deflections. But last time anyone checked, those goals count just the same as end-to-end rushes.
The other strike against Andreychuk is the hall allows only four players a year.
This year's class — Nicklas Lidstrom, Chris Pronger, Sergei Fedorov, Phil Housley — is certainly a respectable class, although I would have picked Andreychuk ahead of Housley. You can understand the hall wanting to have high standards, and you could argue that the Hall of Fame means more if a couple of deserving players are left out as opposed to a couple of undeserving players getting in.
But the hall needs to rethink its rules. A Hall of Famer is a Hall of Famer, and that means some years more than four should get in.
As each year passes, Andreychuk's chances dwindle. More candidates become eligible each summer. Eventually those in that voting room in favor of Andreychuk will give up fighting for him, if they haven't already.
Ultimately and sadly, it would appear, the 18 voters see Andreychuk as a very, very good player but not a great one. But he was so good for so long and that, I would argue, makes him a great player.
Actually, it makes him more than a great player. It makes him a Hall of Famer.