November 12, 2007...10:39 pm
First-class Famers
The big news of the night, of course, was the induction of four great players into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Three years after the lockout, we’re looking at a whackload of people who retired during or just after the year off for the league. The transition to the new game was rough on some, but harder still was taking a year off. Old wounds, both mental and physical, resurfaced for a number of the vets, and we witnessed a slew of greats leaving the game.
Today, that was commemorated. The time period required to induct a player into the HoF is three years, which left the league picking sideliners in an attempt to bide their time until the real meat came around the table. It arrived this year, and it’s been the most widely publicized induction I’ve ever seen.
CBC.ca covers the basics pretty well, so I’ll pass you over to them for informing yourself:
There’s a Moose loose in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Mark (Moose) Messier, considered one of the finest leaders in professional sport, was one of five luminaries inducted Monday.
Ron Francis, Al MacInnis, Scott Stevens and longtime NHL executive Jim Gregory were the others.
All four players were former captains, and entered the Hall in their first year of eligibility.
Also, over on NHL Fanhouse, one piece caught my attention about the NHL’s treatment of Ron Francis:
Is the NHL giving short shrift to Ron Francis’ career in Hartford/Carolina as he gets inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame tonight? I have to admit I didn’t give it much thought over the weekend when I saw this screen shot from nhl.com that featured all four of the players who are going to be inducted as part of the class of 2007. After all, Francis played parts of seven seasons in Pittsburgh wining two Stanley Cups, something that would have to qualify as a highlight of his career.
Then again, it’s hard to forget that he played 16 of his 23 seasons playing for Hartford/Carolina, something that was pointed out to me by Michael Peel, a long-time reader of Off Wing Opinion.
Though it’s hard to overlook the man with the second-most assists in NHL history, the truth is that one of the four is sure to get placed at the bottom of the pile. The other three were much flashier than Francis, and the fact that he played 16 years in a relatively irrelevant market surely helped in obscuring his career. Fans of the Pens in the early 90s likely lost track of the star, musing over where on earth he could have wound up. It’s the opposite of New York-Bound Messier, who became a company of his own once he went from smalltown Edmonton to the Rangers.
That being said, it’s good that Eric noted the discrepancy in coverage. Forgetting Francis would be a huge error on the part of the hockey world!
1 Comment
November 14, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Those are four great players, to be sure. And Francis made the smallest impression on me, despite all his assists. That’s what happens when your role is to set up the other guy’s goal. There’s a certain humility in it. He deserves more recognition, I guess … but he probably isn’t complaining about recognition after being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
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