Sunday, June 22, 2014

Hall of Fame: Who's Eligible the Next Few Years?

With the Hall of Fame Class of 2014 being announced tomorrow, I thought it would be fun to have a look and see who's going to be eligible in the next few years and who is likely to get in. The requirement is that a player has to be retired for 3 years before he can become eligible and only 4 male players can be inducted each year.

2015 (players who retired after the 2011-12 season)
Locks
1) Nick Lidstrom
2) Sergei Fedorov

Other Eligible Players
Jason Arnott
Tomas Holmstrom
Brian Rolston
Marty Turco

2016 (players who retired after the lockout-shortened 2013 season)
Locks
None

Other Eligible Players
Milan Hejduk
Miikka Kiprusoff
Jamie Langenbrunner
Alexei Kovalev

2017 (players who retired after this season)
Locks
1) Teemu Selanne

Other Eligible Players (players in parentheses haven't retired, but are not under contract and could be done)
Ryan Smyth
(Brad Richards)
(Miko Koivu)


It seems like over the next 3 years there are going to be a lot of opportunities for the players who have been missing out over the last few to get enshrined. This list would include Eric Lindros, Rob Blake, Jeremy Roenick, Alexander Mogilny, Chris Osgood (yes I am going to assume he's not on the list tomorrow), Phil Housely, and maybe even going back as far as someone like Rogie Vachon.

I don't think any of the players I've listed above as also being eligible actually has any chance of getting in, it's just that they also happened to retire that season. If I had to guess here are the Hall of Fame classes of the next 3 years:

2015
Nick Lidstrom, Sergei Fedorov, Eric Lindros, Rob Blake

2016
Phil Housely, Alexander Mogilny, Jeremy Roenick, Rogie Vachone

2017
Teemu Selanne, Dave Andreychuk, Ron Hextall, Sergei Zubov

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Who are the locks? Who will finally get in? Who will continue to get snubbed?

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