Hall of Famers from the Earliest Years

In a previous post I wrote that players from the earliest days of organized hockey have largely been left out of the Hall of Fame, not because they are undeserving, but because those voting players into the Hall were unfamiliar with them. The 1890s (and before) have more to offer than Graham Drinkwater, Dan Bain and Mike Grant.

This is one issue that historical Point Allocation results can really help us address. We can use Point Allocation records to develop a career rating system, to determine who likely merits induction into the Hall of Fame. There's no way to develop a definitive answer, of course. On top of the flaws inherent in numerical player valuation systems such as Point Allocation, there's also the balance between peak value and career value to be considered. What's better: having a few truly exceptional seasons, or having a lengthy career full of merely very good seasons? There's no one answer to that question.  As such, we have to strike an arbitrary balance between these two aspects of a player's career, something that seems right while bearing in mind we can never get it objectively right.

The Hall of Fame by Point Allocation system (HOFPA, or "Jimmy"), is made up of four parts:

1. The player's Total Points Allocated per Thousand Minutes (TPAK), for his senior-level career, times five.

2. The player's single-season best TPAK, times four.

3. The sum of the player's five best seasons by TPAK.

4. The player's career TPAK times his senior-level effective games played, divided by 120.

Add these up, and you get the HOFPA score. Let's have a look at the players whose careers were primarily in the 1890s to begin with, since we don't have any actual Hall-of-Famers from the 1880s. (The Hall? column indicates whether the player is currently in the Hall of Fame.)

1890s Players Meriting Induction

Rank	Player	Seasons	Position	Score	Hall?
1	McDougall, Bob	1894-1899	7	98.2	No
2	Bain, Dan	1895-1902	5	86.4	Yes
3	Grant, Mike	1894-1902	2	81.1	Yes
4	Swift, Dolly	1887-1899	45	78.7	No
5	Young, Weldy	1891-1899	2	78.0	No
6	Routh, Havilland	1892-1897	4	77.6	No
7	McKerrow, Clare	1896-1899	4	76.5	No
8	Howard, Atty	1891-1906	72	76.0	No

The player with the most notable career in the 1890s, by this method, is Montreal Victorias right winger Bob McDougall. Dan Bain and Mike Grant, who are both in the Hall, come next. They are good selections. The five remaining players on the above list should have been given good, long looks for the Hall, and should probably be in. (There is no realistic chance of them getting in now - the process for induction requires someone on the current committee to champion a player to even get them on the ballot, and no one really cares about players from this era anymore.)

All of the men mentioned here will get profiles on this site eventually. This post is just laying groundwork.

1890s Players Possibly Meriting Induction

Rank	Player	Seasons	Position	Score	Hall?
9	Armytage, Jack	1891-1901	45	74.8	No
10	Trihey, Harry	1898-1902	5	73.2	Yes
11	Davidson, Cam	1896-1900	5	71.1	No
12	Russell, Herb	1892-1902	62	70.6	No

Another 1890s Hall-of-Famer, Harry Trihey, is a maybe here. He's probably deserving, which means we should also include the Winnipeg Vics' Jack Armytage, who was essentially Dan Bain before there was a Dan Bain. I would personally draw the line below Trihey. This, of course, would exclude...

1890s Players Probably Not Meriting Induction

Rank	Player	Seasons	Position	Score	Hall?
13	Drinkwater, Graham	1893-1899	4	68.1	Yes
X	Farrell, Art	1897-1901	7	58.9	Yes

Drinkwater is certainly close enough that his selection is not a terrible one, seen through the lens of this method. Art Farrell, of course, wrote the first real hockey book (Hockey: Canada's Royal Winter Game), which I've quoted from frequently here. He played with Trihey on the mighty Shamrocks from the turn of the century, and his authorship made him a well-known name. Being a well-known name can often be enough to get you inducted when you played a long time ago, as we'll see as we get into later years.

So the Hall of Fame committee seems to have only produced one real false positive from the 1890s, but of course they also overlooked seven players who probably deserve the honour, including the single most outstanding player of the decade. They could have done much worse, but also so much better.

Now we can go back into the 1880s. As it turns out, there are really only three players from that decade to have the value and consistency required to rank highly by this system. They should be familiar names to regular readers by now:

1880s Players Meriting Induction

Rank	Player	Seasons	Position	Score	Hall?
1	Stewart, James	1884-1894	1	86.4	No
2	Cameron, Allan	1885-1895	2	86.1	No
3	Paton, Tom	1885-1893	G	84.5	No

We've discussed each of Stewart, Cameron and Paton before. It seems you can add "should-be Hall-of-Famers" to their resumes.

1880s Players Possibly Meriting Induction

Rank	Player	Seasons	Position	Score	Hall?
4	Arnton, Jack	1884-1890	19	64.9	No
5	Campbell, Jack	1885-1891	2	62.3	No
6	Hodgson, Billy	1885-1888	9	55.9	No

We've also talked about Jack Campbell. Although he had a very high peak value, said peak was very short, too short to merit real consideration for the Hall of Fame. These players are so far behind the three Winged Wheelers mentioned above that that triumvirate are the only deserving men from the 1880s.

In coming posts we'll look at the 1900s and 1910s in terms of Hall of Fame players as well. The committee did a better job with these later players, which makes a good deal of sense when you're relying solely on personal knowledge of the players involved.

The Quality of Pre-Stanley Cup Hockey (Part 3)

This is the third and final post addressing the quality of pre-Stanley Cup hockey, demonstrating that the line between 1892 and 1893 is an arbitrary one and does not reflect a real difference in the quality of hockey. In this installment, we look at the idea that the lack of Hall-of-Famers from that era speaks to the quality of the players.

Hall of Fame

Some have argued that if the players from the pre-Stanley Cup era were so good, then at least a few of them would have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. The selection committee usually had first-hand knowledge of the players they inducted, and didn't deem any player from this time worthy of the honour.

This appeal to authority is flawed, since the Hall of Fame selection committee has made numerous selections, even its early years, which can be described as questionable at best. The first Hall of Fame induction was in 1945, 62 years after the first Montreal Winter Carnival tournament. The idea that the committee had first-hand knowledge of early players is unsupportable. The first selection committee was made up of the following men:

Red Dutton (born 1898)

Art Ross (born 1886)

Lester Patrick (born 1883)

Abbie Coo (born 1885)

Wes McKnight (born 1909)

Basil O'Meara (born 1892)

W. A Hewitt (Born 1875)

In addition, there were Frank Sargent and J.P. Fitzgerald, whose birth years I have been unable to determine. Clearly there is little evidence that the committee would have had first-hand knowledge of players active in 1890 - some weren't even born yet and several others were but a few years old at the time. There is no reason to think these men had any particular insight into the earliest players. The only one we know to be old enough, W.A. Hewitt, was a native of Toronto and began his newspaper career in 1895 at the Toronto News. Toronto was, of course, not involved in the highest level of hockey at this time. Notably, Hewitt transferred to Montreal to work at the Montreal Herald as sports editor in 1899, when Mike Grant was still active and Graham Drinkwater had only just retired. Coincidentally, these are chronologically the first two Hall of Fame players. Hewitt would have had no direct experience with Tom Paton, then, but plenty with Mike Grant. Is it any wonder that one is in, and the other isn't?

Conclusion

Since hockey in the 1880s era was so similar to the 1890s era, it is unfair to discount its players while not doing the same for men like Mike Grant, Graham Drinkwater, Alf Smith and Harvey Pulford as well. An argument can be made that the professional era brought a higher degree of competition; however the point of these posts is merely to establish that there is no substantive difference between hockey in 1890 and hockey in 1895. If the players from 1895 (Drinkwater, Grant, Havilland Routh, Bob McDougall) are worthy of consideration, then so are the players from 1890. There may be a discount necessary, but not moreso for 1890 than 1895.

In due time we will address which of the early era players should have been considered for induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame. But we're still just getting started here.