Welcoming the 2024 class of inductees to the Hockey Hall of Very Good (2024)

It’s Hockey Hall of Fame time, which you could be forgiven for not knowing because there does seem to be some other hockey stuff going on these days. But the Class of 2024 will be announced on Tuesday, no doubt sparking another round of debate over who made it, who got snubbed and why the committee has clearly never watched a single game involving your favorite team.

You know what that means. It’s time to welcome another class to the Hall of Very Good.

We’ve been doing this for a few years now, but let’s refresh your memory on what’s about to happen. Some fans use “Hall of Very Good” as an insult, a way to devalue the career of a guy who may not quite deserve a plaque in the real thing. That’s not what we’re about here. Instead, we’re going to use this space to celebrate the players who presumably don’t have a realistic shot at induction but were still pretty darn fun to watch in their day.

We honored names like Tim Kerr, Trevor Linden, Eric Desjardins and Bob Probert in the inaugural Class of 2022. They were followed by Ziggy Palffy, Glen Wesley, Ryan Smyth and Miikka Kiprusoff headlining the Class of 2023.

I think those names should give you the general vibe of what we’re going for, but just to be clear: Anyone who still feels like they have a shot at the real Hall of Fame is not eligible. That involves a bit of guesswork, since we never know who the secretive committee is actually talking about, let alone how many votes guys are getting, but we’ll do our best, which means no Patrik Elias, Keith Tkachuk or Rod Brind’Amour. And it should go without saying that anyone we induct who goes on to make the real Hall will immediately have their Hall of Very Good plaque destroyed with a sledgehammer for being a traitor.

This year, I’m dropping the class down from a full roster to two forward lines, two defense pairs and two goalies, mainly because I’d like to do this annually and I don’t want to be inducting Len Esau in a few years. That’s going to make the competition even tougher this year, but we’re up to it.

Let’s Remember Some Guys who were very good, even if they weren’t quite immortal.

Forwards

Rick Nash, Blue Jackets

Like a few players in our Hall, Rick Nash was a guy who at one point seemed to be firmly on a HHOF track. He was the No. 1 pick in 2002 and immediately became the face of the franchise in Columbus. And at least initially, he lived up to the hype, tying for the Rocket Richard Trophy in his second season. (The fact that he did it with just 41 goals should give you a sense of how exciting that wonderful era was.)

From there, he settled in as a consistent 30-goal scorer, which is a perfectly respectable thing to be, especially when an all-star cast of teammates does not surround you. He hit the 40-goal mark again in 2008-09, and ended up scoring 289 goals in nine regular seasons with the Blue Jackets and, uh, one more in four playoff games. He was mercifully moved to the Rangers in the 2012 offseason, where he somehow played for six seasons even though I could have sworn it was like two.

Nash ended up playing 16 seasons in all, finishing with 437 goals and 805 points. Even in the Dead Puck era, those numbers won’t get you near the Hall of Fame without some serious Selke support, which was never Nash’s game. Still, his totals make him a slam dunk for the HOVG, the first Blue Jacket to be inducted.

Shane Doan, Coyotes

We’re probably going to see Patrick Marleau inducted someday, maybe even as soon as this year, largely based on his games played totals. That’s a debate for another day, but if Marleau’s going to end up in the real Hall, we should jump up and grab the guy who’s next on the game-played list for non-Hall-of-Famers (among eligible players). It also feels appropriate to get a Coyote into our Hall, right as the franchise dies a merciful death is temporarily placed on hold.

And yes, I realize some Coyotes fans would love to see Shane Doan in the real Hall of Fame someday. With only 402 goals and under 1,000 points, despite more than 1,500 games played, he just doesn’t have the numbers. But he has plenty of respect around the league, thanks to his leadership and hard-nosed style. He also has plenty of fans of other teams who can’t stand him, which is its own kind of compliment when you think about it.

Miroslav Satan, Sabres

You guys have been banging the drum for Miroslav Satan in the comment sections of the last two classes, and you’ve sold me. After breaking in with the Oilers in the mid-1990s, Satan made his mark in Buffalo. He scored 40 goals for the 1998-99 team that made it within one perfectly legal goal of winning the Stanley Cup, leading that team in scoring by double digits. He’d settle in as a consistent 30-goal, 70-point guy through the lockout, after which he had some solid seasons with the Islanders and brief stints with the Penguins and Bruins.

In all, Satan scored 363 goals and 735 points in 14 NHL seasons, playing in two All-Star Games and finishing in the top 10 in goals twice without ever getting so much as a single Hart Trophy vote. Pretty much the ideal HOVG resume.

And yes, he gets bonus points for having one of the greatest names in NHL history. He also loses points for never winding up on the Devils, a tragic loss of pun-making opportunity that many of us are still recovering from.

Simon Gagne, Flyers

We don’t get a ton of multi-time Team Canada Olympians in the Hall of Very Good, but Gagne joins Nash in our class of 2024. Gagne was a two-timer, making the squad in both 2002 and 2006. That gives you a sense of how good he was at his peak. Dude was even booking SportsCenter commercials.

Gagne was a first-round pick in 1998 who debuted a year later and made the all-rookie team, quickly establishing himself as a goal-scoring threat. He peaked in the post-lockout years, scoring a combined 88 goals in two seasons. Health issues kept him from maintaining that form, although he had a decent season with the Lightning and won the Stanley Cup in part-time duty with the 2012 Kings. Add in a return to the Flyers and a short comeback attempt with the Bruins, and Gagne ended up scoring 291 goals, not bad at all for a guy whose entire career was swallowed up by the Dead Puck era.

Jere Lehtinen, Stars

This one feels mildly risky, if only because there seem to be plenty of Stars fans who are convinced that Lehtinen is still in the mix for the real HHOF. And sure, with three Selkes to his name and the Guy Carbonneau precedent to point to, I suppose there’s a chance. But we’re still talking about a guy who barely cleared 500 career points, never had a Hart vote and only got all-star votes in two of his 14 seasons. He wasn’t a Hall of Famer.

But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t one of the very best defensive forwards of his era, and maybe even the best. In addition to his three Selke wins, he had three other years as a finalist, and they all came within nine years. If he’d scored just a little more, he’d make for an interesting case. As it stands, he’s a beloved legend in Dallas and probably underrated everywhere else, and our Hall is happy to have him.

Tiger Williams, Maple Leafs

We’ve made it a tradition to induct an enforcer in each class so far, and if we’re going to continue that trend, we should probably find room for the league’s all-time PIMs leader. With 3,971 minutes earned in his career, it feels pretty safe to assume that Williams’ record will never be broken – if last year’s leader, Liam O’Brien, can keep matching his 153 PIM total year after year, he’ll have to play until he’s 53 years old to beat Tiger’s mark. Stay healthy, Liam.

When he wasn’t in the penalty box, Williams was a decent winger, posting 30-goal seasons in Toronto and Vancouver. He was good enough as a Leaf, in fact, that the Canucks took him as the main piece in a trade that sent fellow HOVG honoree Rick Vaive to the Leafs. And when Williams did score, he let you know about it:

Defensem*n

Jeff Brown, Blues

I thought about trying to slide him in as a Quebec Nordique, but his best years came in St. Louis. And that’s saying something because he had a lot of very good years, racking up points as one of his era’s most under-appreciated offensive defensem*n.

In a relatively short 13-year career, Brown hit the 50-point mark eight times and scored 20 goals in a season three times. His peak came with the Blues in 1992-93, when he had 25 goals and 78 points, then somehow didn’t appear on a single Norris ballot despite outscoring that year’s winner, Chris Chelios. That was a pattern for Brown, whose appearance on one all-star ballot that year was the only award vote of this career. And yet he’s in the all-time top 50 for defenseman goal scoring, ahead of names like Mike Green, Sergei Zubov and even Borje Salming. Era obviously has a lot to do with that, but Brown racked up points, and we’re happy to have him as our Class of 2024 power-play point man.

Dave Babych, Canucks

I don’t know if it was the mustache or the fact that he played forever, but I always thought of Babych as a hard-nosed stay-at-home guy. And for most of his career, that was a pretty accurate description. But when he first broke into the NHL with the original Jets, he did a lot of scoring, too, peaking with a 74-point season in 1982-83. He basically split the first 18 years of his career between the Jets, Whalers and Canucks, including a 1985-86 season that saw him traded from Winnipeg to Hartford while finishing sixth in Norris balloting. You may think of him as a 1980s guy, but he played until the 1998-99 season, his 19th in the league.

But yeah, the mustache was fantastic.

Teppo Numminen, Jets

Numminen was the classic dependable defenseman you could end up taking for granted if you weren’t careful. He debuted in 1988 and spent 15 seasons with the same franchise, split almost evenly between the Jets and Coyotes. We already have a Coyote on this year’s list and have never inducted an original Jet, so Numminen goes in wearing Winnipeg colors, but no player even came close to spanning both sides of the franchise history as he did.

He was never a huge scorer, peaking with 54 points in 1995-96, but was good in both ends. And despite being Finnish in an era where people assume that means you’d shy away from physical play, let’s just say he wasn’t a fun guy to try to hit.

Please enjoy this sizzle reel of his career highlights, from a Finnish news station.

Brad McCrimmon, Flames

Full credit to Eric Duhatschek on this one. He made a strong pitch for McCrimmon as part of The Athletic’s Hockey Hall of Fame committee exercise, even as he acknowledged that there was no way he’d actually get voted in. One of the best defensive defensem*n of his era, McCrimmon peaked with back-to-back seasons in the late 1980s, when he finished fourth and then sixth in Norris voting, then played a key role on the Flames’ 1989 Cup winner.

Eric’s case was that McCrimmon was an underrated player in what’s become an underrated role, and he sold me. No, McCrimmon will almost certainly never get any serious consideration from the real Hall, but we’ll happily take a stay-at-home guy for our Hall of Very Good.

Goalies

Olaf Kolzig, Capitals

The goalies have traditionally been the easiest category for our Hall, since the real thing was so picky about who they inducted. That changed last year, and now I’m a little nervous, if only because I might have put Mike Vernon in a previous class and then looked silly. For that reason, I’ll stay away from Chris Osgood, Curtis Joseph, Tim Thomas and even Mike Richter, among other names that feel like they could still be in the HHOF conversation. I’m also going to avoid Kirk McLean this year, given who we’ve already taken and the importance of team chemistry. But that still leaves us with plenty of options.

Kolzig’s a great example of what we’re looking for. He won a Vezina, got to 300 wins and once dragged a bad team to the final. But he also never won the Cup, was only a Vezina finalist that one time and sits 37th in all-time wins. Would the real Hall ever make room for the best South African-born player of all-time? It feels unlikely, but we’ll happily grab him as one half our Class of 2024 duo. Hey, at least he was always intense.

José Theodore, Canadiens

The real Hall of Fame is crammed full of Canadiens goalies, and there’s a decent chance they’ll want to claim Carey Price in another year. It’s only fair that we have one, too, so let’s jump at the extremely rare chance to induct a Hart Trophy winner who the real HHOF won’t be saving a spot for.

Theodore’s 2002 MVP should probably have gone to Jarome Iginla, sure, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a worthy winner on a very mediocre Montreal team. It was an all-time one-hit wonder season, and in fact, was the only time in his 16-year career that he got any Vezina votes at all. But if you’re the sort of fan who likes your HOVG inductees to have a high peak, then you can’t ask for much more than this.

Congratulations to the Class of 2024. Now it’s your chance to head to the comments section and submit your nominations for next year’s class, with the understanding that if you get snarky about somebody who’s either a) already in from 2022 or 2023 or b) a legitimate HHOF candidate, I get to come to your house and eat all your potato chips. With that in mind, the floor is open.

(Top photo of Jose Theodore: Jeff Vinnick / Getty Images)