Exclusive Hockey Hall needs to be inclusive
For 71 years, they’ve been inducting people into the Hockey Hall of Fame. It’s always been only partly about hockey excellence and making a meaningful contribution to the sport.
To an unsettling degree, it’s about connections. Always has been. That’s how Gil Stein (briefly) got in.
To an unfortunate degree, it’s also about gender. Men protecting their turf or being anti-women, however you want to put it.
And sadly, none of this is likely to change soon.
The 18-member selection committee, afraid to ever have to explain its deliberations, has never wanted to tell the hockey world the identity of players considered for induction or the vote totals. But through this year’s selections, the committee’s priorities are very clear.
First, the old boy’s club always comes first.
Pat Quinn will be honoured Monday, and most feel pretty good about that. He had 684 regular-season wins, and coached Canada to a gold medal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, among other achievements.
He also enjoyed extraordinary connections and influential friendships in the hockey world. In fact, he was chairman of the hall of fame, right up to the point he passed away in November, 2014.
Two years later, he was voted into the hall himself. Fair enough.
Now compare that to the process that got Eric Lindros inducted.
Lindros played his final game in 2007, and became eligible for the hall in 2010. For at least five years, he was either the best player in the game, or in that conversation. He won a Hart Trophy and, despite a career cut short by injuries, had 865 points in 760 career games, plus another 57 points in 53 playoff games.
Lindros never won a Stanley Cup, but he won a Memorial Cup with the Oshawa Generals, won silver playing for the non-NHL Canadian Olympic team at Albertville in 1992, was the captain of Canada’s first all-NHL Olympic entry in 1998 and was part of that gold medal-winning squad four years later under Quinn.
Quite a career, all in all. And he was passed over for the hall six times. Six times. Lindros was a rebel, and many in the sport never forgave him for having the temerity to object to playing for the Quebec Nordiques. But his greatest sin might have been falling out of favour with Ed Snider, the powerful boss of the Philadelphia Flyers. The Lindros clan, led by Carl and Bonnie, had many squabbles with Snider until their son’s association with the team ended with a trade to the Rangers in 2001.
Snider, who campaigned aggressively for former Flyers coach Fred Shero before he was inducted in 2013, died last spring at the age of 83.
Two months later, after those six snubs, Lindros finally got the nod.
Did Snider’s influence keep Lindros out of the hall? Was this similar to Conn Smythe blocking Busher Jackson’s induction until 1971? Or Glenn Anderson being kept waiting under curious circumstances for a decade? We’ll never know.
But Snider sure didn’t help Lindros. Connections, connections. Gender, meanwhile, was supposed to be an issue that would become unimportant when it was announced in 2010 that women would be eligible for induction. It was far too late in coming, but still, it finally happened, and Angela James and Cammi Granato were the first two women honoured.
Since then, in six hall of fame classes, 22 male hockey players and six builders, including one referee, have been inducted. But just two more women. None again this year. At 28-2 over the last six years, so much for even a semblance of equality.
This year, the selection committee showed some genuine creativity in bending over backwards to honour men over women, dusting off the portfolios of former goaltender Rogatien Vachon and one-time Calgary Flames winger Sergei Makarov.
Vachon had been eligible since 1985, passed over 31 times.
Makarov, a member of the famed KLM Line of Soviet hockey, had been eligible since 2000, but not voted in 16 times.
However, with the hall desperate to fill out a roster for this year’s induction ceremony, Vachon and Makarov found their resumes were suddenly good enough and better than any woman.
The fact that the selection committee doesn’t have a single female member, or any member with a significant background in women’s hockey, tells you a great deal.
You can easily make a hall of fame case for Cassie Campbell-Pascall, Karen Bye, France St. Louis, Manon Rheaume, Daniele Sauvageau, Shirley Cameron, Hazel McCallion and Fran Rider, plus a number of significant internationals from outside North America, such as Riikka Niemenen, Kim Martin and Guo Hong.
All it would take is a little homework.
Along with James and Granato, Geraldine Heaney (2013) and Angela Ruggiero (2015) have been enshrined. That’s four.
Basketball’s hall of fame, meanwhile, has honoured 17 women. There are 35 women in the world golf hall of fame. There are 76 women in the tennis hall of fame.
These numbers are just so embarrassing for hockey.
Girls’ hockey registration at all levels in North America has increased tenfold over the past quarter-century. But not a single female has been credited with helping create that by being honoured as a hall of fame builder.
Look, nobody wants to make a case against those who have been voted in.
The hall says it prefers to be “inclusive” rather than “exclusive” like Cooperstown, and that’s fine. Put the bar wherever you want.
But be equally inclusive towards women. If we can’t do away with the gutless secrecy and the wink-wink cronyism, let’s at least do that. Damien Cox is the co-host of Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet 590 The FAN. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for The Star. Follow him @DamoSpin.