Hall of Fame Standards for the Challenge Era

Today we're going to wrap up our look at the Inductinator, which is a system I devised to determine implicit standards for Hall of Fame player selections. Well, not quite wrap up, since I should make some comment about European and female players, which I will at some point. But let's stick to the things we can mostly explain for now. In Hockey Abstract 2014, I discuss at some length the results from 1930 to the present, both to shed light on history and to make predictions of future inductions. I've already covered the period 1912 to 1929 here on Hockey Historysis. And now we look at the years up to 1911.

This time period, which I'll call the Challenge Era, calls for a somewhat different approach than more recent times. There are no individual awards or All-Star teams to draw information from. Player career statistics are all but useless, in large part because careers were so much shorter in the 19th century, so that comparisons between early professional players in the oughts and senior players before 1900 are not terribly informative.

As it turns out, we don't really need all that, because we have the Stanley Cup. Take note that of all the Hall of Fame players who played before 1911, none of them began their careers before the 1892/93 season, the first that the Stanley Cup was awarded. The best pre-Stanley Cup players such as Tom Paton, Allan Cameron, James Stewart and Jack Campbell have not been honoured. For the 25 Hall of Famers from this era, approximately 60% of their total Inductinator scores is made up of Stanley Cup-related exploits.

Of the 26 Hall of Famers from this era (see below), only five did not win a Stanley Cup championship. So we start by giving skaters 10 points for each Cup championship, and goaltenders 25 per title. Captains of Stanley Cup teams get extra points; players who captained one such team (such as Graham Drinkwater and Tommy Phillips) get 10 points, and each additional Cup captaincy earns a whopping 70 points apiece. Mike Grant, Dickie Boon and Bruce Stuart were captains twice each, while Harvey Pulford was three times, which is enough by itself to get him over the minimum score of 100 for the Inductinator to see the player as being a Hall-of-Famer.

I should say at this point that for this era, the number of Cup championships a player has is not as straightforward as it is for later players. During the challenge era, there were often multiple Cup series played in a single season. The current champion could be called upon by the trustees to defend their title several times in the same season, even sometimes in the middle of a season. In 1908, for example, the Montreal Wanderers had to defend against challenges from the Ottawa Victorias in January, and both the Winnipeg Maple Leafs and Toronto HC in March. For purposes of the Inductinator, we do not count a successful defence of an existing title to be a Stanley Cup championship; it's only when a new champion results from a series that it's counted. The Wanderers don't get credit for three Cup championships for 1908, they get one.

Players winning the Cup with multiple teams get a bonus of 40 points. While this may not seem to sensible, there's not other way to explain how Tom Hooper is in the Hall of Fame. Bruce Stuart, Tommy Phillips and Fred Scanlan also get these points, but they'd have enough points otherwise to still meet the implicit standards. Cecil Blachford also won Cups with two teams, but these points aren't enough to get him to 100. Which is good, since he's not in the Hall of Fame.

Games played, and especially goals scored, in Stanley Cup matches contribute a lot of points the to the Challenge Era Inductinator. Players earn points if they participated in 10 or more Cup matches, and goaltenders earn more per game (since there's so little else to go on for them). A player who did not play in a single Stanley Cup match suffers a penalty of 20 points; otherwise, there would be no way to explain how Herb Jordan is not in the Hall.

But in terms of Challenge Era players being recognized by the Hall of Fame, it seems nothing is as important as scoring goals in Stanley Cup matches. Of the Inductinator scores for the Hall of Famers, a full 26% is earned by Stanley Cup goals alone. Every single player from this era that scored at least 14 goals in Stanley Cup matches is in the Hall of Fame. Fred Whitcroft, who did not play very much top-level hockey but scored 14 goals in eight Cup matches, is in. He gets 100 points for his Stanley Cup goals. He has to, since he did nothing else of note in his hockey career, and we want to explain his induction. Frank McGee scored 41 goals in Cup games, and that explains why he's on the top of the list below.

But wait, you might be aware that Frank "Pud" Glass won a bunch of Stanley Cups with the Wanderers, including one as captain, and scored 13 goals in those games. So how do we explain his exclusion from the Hall? Simple; we consider goals per game as well. Glass took 11 games to score his goals (1.18 per game), while Whitcroft (for example) scored 14 in eight (1.75 per game). Since Glass scored at a subpar rate (for a Hall-of-Famer, anyway), his total goals aren't valued as highly.

Other points are earned for having reasonably lengthy senior careers (important for Hod Stuart and Blair Russel), for playing with one team for at least nine years (again, important for Blair Russel), and for finishing in the top four in goals for a top-level league, or the top two in goals for a lower-level league. Russell Bowie makes out like a bandit in this last category, earning 380 of his 409 points here. He lead a top-tier league in goals five times, was second four times and third once. No one else comes close to that level of production in the Challenge Era.

Finally, we get to the more arbitrary stuff. Tragic deaths are treated favourably by the Hall of Fame. George Richardson was killed in WWI, and although this was after his playing career was done it seems he was more fondly remembered because of it, since otherwise we would not be able explain his induction in this analysis. Hod Stuart's death was all the more noteworthy, as he died in mid-career and as a Stanley Cup champion. Almost all of his Inductinator score (80 out of 102) is derived from this.

All of this so far can be used to explain 22 of the 26 Hall-of-Famers from this era. We're left with Graham Drinkwater, Billy Gilmour, Jack Ruttan and Oliver Seibert.

With Gilmour, one suspects that the true reason he was inducted is that at McGill he played with Frank Patrick, whose brother Lester was of course extremely influential at the time as a member of the selection committee. His Cup wins and goals give him 50 points, so we need another 50. We can attribute that to personal connections and give up, or we can look for something else he might have been famous for. Well, he is one of the very few sets of three brothers who each won a Stanley Cup, and he did it with his brothers (dave and Suddy) on the same team. So, we can give him 40 points for that feat, and an extra 10 for winning the most Cups amongst his set of brothers. It's not the worst thing to recognize such a thing, I suppose, if in fact that's what was being recognized by the committee.

Drinkwater is 40 points short. The only thing I could find to set him apart was the fact that he was one of the three original Allan Cup trustees in 1909, well after his playing career was over. If I were on the committee, I wouldn't assign any player value to this, and maybe they didn't. But it's the only thing I can think of to get him over 100 points. The two other trustees were Dr. H.B. Yates and Sir Edward Clouston. Clouston might also be eligible to collect these points. He never played for the Stanley Cup, of course, since he was 44 years old by the time that mug was first awarded. But Clouston was one of the "Original 18", the 18 men who played in the hockey match at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal on March 3, 1875. Clouston played with James Creighton's side, who won that match two goals to one.

Just to make sure we're not being completely arbitrary here, we should also check the original Stanley Cup trustees, to see if they would be put over 100 with this bonus. The two original Stanley Cup trustees were John Sweetland and Philip Ross. Sweetland played no high-level hockey that I'm aware of, but Ross did. He played for McGill in 1879, and later in Ottawa for the famous Rideau Rebels in 1890 and the Ottawa Generals (later the Senators) in 1891. But he never played for the Stanley Cup, so even if we gave him the same 40 points we give Drinkwater, he still wouldn't be over 100 on the Inductinator scale, so we're safe.

The induction of Jack Ruttan, I'll tell you right now, cannot be explained by the Inductinator. He played five seasons of senior hockey in Manitoba in the early 1910s, and won the Allan Cup in 1913. He was very well-regarded as a player in Manitoba, but his accomplishments do not outshine dozens of other players who are nowhere near the Hall. He's a complete and total question mark. I can't explain him, not even close.

Finally, Oliver Siebert. He was certainly a good player. He gains 45 points for leading a lesser league (Western Ontario League) in goals, but loses 20 for never having scored a Stanley Cup goal, for a total of 25. We need another 75 points. Now, there is something that sets Siebert apart from other players, which I suppose we can assign a value of 75 points, although doing so is incredibly silly. That this is this: he has a son (in Earl Seibert) who is a Hall of Fame-calibre player. Oliver was inducted in 1961, and Earl in 1963. We can technically use this to get the elder Seibert over 100 points, though I feel a bit dirty doing so. I suppose such a thing would increase a player's fame, since that's a pretty vague term. I did check other players as well, to make sure such a bonus would not any non-Hall-of-Famers over 100. The closest is goaltender Bert Lindsay, who played after the Challenge Era. Being Ted Lindsay's father is not enough to get him over the threshold, so we can award this bonus to Seibert without producing undesirable results.

Player	Pos	HoF?	Score
Frank McGee	F	yes	416
Russell Bowie	F	yes	409
Bruce Stuart	F	yes	350
Tommy Phillips	F	yes	332
Harvey Pulford	D	yes	272
Marty Walsh	F	yes	250
Harry Westwick	F	yes	231
Alf Smith	F	yes	226
Harry Trihey	F	yes	224
Dan Bain	F	yes	172
Riley Hern	G	yes	167
Fred Scanlan	F	yes	159
Mike Grant	D	yes	122
Tom Hooper	D	yes	105
Graham Drinkwater	D	yes	102
Hod Stuart	D	yes	102
George Richardson	F	yes	101
Bouse Hutton	G	yes	100
Blair Russel	F	yes	100
Dickie Boon	D	yes	100
Billy McGimsie	F	yes	100
Fred Whitcroft	F	yes	100
Art Farrell	F	yes	100
Oliver Seibert	F	yes	100
Billy Gilmour	F	yes	100
Bill Nicholson	G	no	99
Herb Jordan	F	no	99
Pud Glass	F	no	97
Archie Hooper	F	no	96
Billy Breen	F	no	96
Lorne Campbell	F	no	92
Cecil Blachford	F	no	90
Fred Higginbotham	D	no	90
Suddy Gilmour	F	no	89
Rod Flett	D	no	87
Gordon Lewis	G	no	87
Billy Roxburgh	F	no	82
Eddie Geroux	G	no	79
Herb Birmingham	F	no	76
Art Brown	G	no	74
James McKenna	G	no	74
George McKay	F	no	74
Tony Gingras	F	no	73
Robert MacDougall	F	no	73
Oren Frood	F	no	72
Bruce Ridpath	F	no	68
Clare McKerrow	F	no	66
Ezra Dumart	F	no	65
Jack Ruttan	D	yes	0

You can see that, by these standards, there are a number of other players who could just as easily be in the Hall of Fame. Bill Nicholson, Herb Jordan, Pud Glass, Archie Hooper, Billy Breen are all extremely close, and several others are over 90 points as well. Would we view these players any differently today if they had a few more breaks and were elected to the Hall of Fame? Perhaps, but we really shouldn't. The Inductinator analysis reveals that some Hall of Fame selections from this early era seems almost arbitrary, so I cannot recommend putting too much weight on the honour.

Hall of Fame Standards for the Major-League Era (Part Two)

This year's new edition of the Hockey Abstract includes a lengthy chapter on the Inductinator, which is a system I devised to determine implicit standards for the Hall of Fame, trying to figure out why each Hall of Fame player was selected as such. It may not be that the best or most deserving players are inducted according to your personal standards or indeed mine, but the Inductinator proceeds with the assumption that the Hall of Fame Selection Committee acts in a reasonably rational manner, and has a reason for each of its selections, even if the justification for using such a reason might be weak.

Last time we had a look at goaltenders and defencemen who played in what I call the Major-League Era, specifically the years 1912 to 1929 when the Stanley Cup became the domain of only a top few hockey leagues. Today we'll be looking at the forwards from this era. Remember that the system is designed so that every player with an Inductinator score of 100 or more meets the implicit Hall of Fame standards.

For most players, the criteria are pretty straightforward. If we look at the top man as an example, Newsy Lalonde. He earns 22 points for the senior-level hockey games he played in excess of 200, and another 42 points for the points he scored in excess of that number. He earns 67 points for his senior career points-per-game average; anyone in excess of 0.95 gets points for this, up to a maximum of 70. Lalonde receives 43 points for his 19 seasons of senior hockey; 14 is the minimum number to earn any points in this category. Newsy earns a ridiculous number of points for his top-four finishes in major-league scoring. He led a major league in scoring three times, was second once, third once and fourth four time, resulting in 112 points. Only Joe Malone (with four) and Fred Taylor (with five) led a major league in scoring more often during this period. Lalonde also served as a player-coach in the major leagues for nine seasons, and earns 60 points for that, giving him a total of 346. He was also head coach in the NHL for seven seasons after his playing career was over, but only those players with at least nine such seasons earn any points for it. It may seem odd to reward a player for something that happened after his playing career, but without this category there would be no way to explain Jack Adams' induction into the player category in 1959.

This isn't the only post-career accomplishment that has to be considered in this era to explain some player selections. You might notice Conn Smythe on the list below, with 60 points on the scale despite playing literally only a handful of senior games. All of these points come from the fact that he was the coach of a Canadian Olympic hockey team (in 1928). Without this massive amount of points, you could not explain Frank Rankin's induction; he was the coach of the 1924 team. Ranking was quite a good player, but had a very short career. His high career points-per-game gives him 47 points, and the other 60 come from the Olympics. It's even worse in the case of Steamer Maxwell, who is recognized as the coach of the 1920 Olympic team, and receives 100 points on the Inductinator scale for this. You can explain the extra 40 points either because he was the first Olympic coach, or because he had a longer senior career than Rankin or Smythe. Once again, Maxwell was a good player in his day, though he never played professionally. He was an extremely fast rover, but he used his speed largely in defence, and never scored very much. He's nowhere near the Hall of Fame purely as a player.

There are some other kludgy work-arounds needed in this era, awarding a large amount of points to a player for an accomplishment that would not seem to be worth that much at first glance. Shorty Green is probably the best example. Based on his playing career alone, his Inductinator score would be precisely zero. He was a decent player, but nothing special. There are two things for which he might be renowned, both of which arise from his captaincy of the 1924/25 Hamilton Tigers. This was the first (and to date, only) NHL club that went from worst to first in the span of a single season. Green was also the leader of the Hamilton player strike before the 1925 playoffs, which earned them a good deal of fame. So we can assign arbitrary values to these events, and give Short Green 50 points for each of them to get to the Hall. It's not terribly satisfying, but it works.

Rusty Crawford is another one. Based purely on his career numbers, despite his very long career Crawford would score only a 50. The only thing that sticks out about him at all, that other players cannot match, is the range of his major-league career. He is the only player from this, so far as I can tell, to have played for a major-league team in every Canadian province that had such a team (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Québec). He played for the Vancouver Maroons, Calgary Tigers, Saskatoon Crescents, Toronto Arenas, Ottawa Senators and Quebec Bulldogs in his career. I can't find anyone else who meets this criteria. Newsy Lalonde missed out Alrberta and Tommy Dunderdale didn't play in Ontario. They're Hall of Famers nonetheless. Art Gagne and Eddie Oatman both also hit four provinces, but not five; Gagne missed BC and Oatman, Saskatchewan. So if we give Crawford 50 points for this feat, his induction makes sense.

Rewinding a bit, there are a number of things that Newsy Lalonde missed out on for Inductinator points. Players who won at least three Stanley Cup championships earn points for the feat, while Lalonde had only one. Captaining a Stanley Cup championship, and scoring a Cup-winning goal also garner points. Playing and scoring goals in the Olympics are also rewarded, as are Allan Cup accomplishments. The Hart and Byng awards are also valuable, though they arrived relatively late in this time period.

As you can see from the table below, there are a number of players who could just as easily be Hall-of-Famers as not. Bernie Morris, Corb Denneny, Harry Smith and Dubbie Kerr are all only a few points off of the 100 threshold. Personally I would have put each of these men in before Rusty Crawford among others, but the Inductinator is not about merit, about who should be in the Hall of Fame. It's about explaining who is in the Hall. It's an attempt to shed some light on history, not to call down the efforts of the selection committee.

We'll finish up our look at the Inductinator next week, when we examine the Hall-of-Fame players from the Challenge Era, up to 1911.

FORWARD	HoF	SCORE	GP	G	A	PTS	PIM
Newsy Lalonde	yes	346	344	443	94	537	806
Joe Malone	yes	277	278	345	73	418	221
Fred Taylor	yes	242	206	218	110	328	219
Frank Nighbor	yes	231	438	255	119	374	324
Didier Pitre	yes	231	344	313	79	392	457
Cy Denneny	yes	177	398	310	90	400	450
Dick Irvin	yes	160	324	367	93	460	409
Ernie Russell	yes	151	100	176	16	192	299
Duke Keats	yes	150	301	234	117	351	764
Frank Fredrickson	yes	145	366	246	112	358	499
Harry Broadbent	yes	141	385	224	63	287	829
Frank Foyston	yes	140	367	255	82	337	206
Tommy Dunderdale	yes	140	302	260	74	334	609
Mickey MacKay	yes	138	422	274	118	392	334
Jack Walker	yes	138	444	262	99	361	129
Hobey Baker	yes	130	41	65	33	98	2
Billy Burch	yes	127	412	166	73	239	255
Jimmy Gardner	yes	120	169	90	29	119	431
Frank Rankin	yes	107	21	63	0	63	0
Scotty Davidson	yes	107	49	52	18	70	150
Harry Watson	yes	106	60	94	20	114	2
Gord Roberts	yes	106	171	207	44	251	325
Tommy Smith	yes	105	213	365	33	398	359
Jack Darragh	yes	104	258	208	73	281	355
George Hay	yes	102	410	208	118	326	145
Jack Adams	yes	102	297	249	56	305	518
Babe Dye	yes	101	281	216	48	264	221
Moose Goheen	yes	101	143	65	15	80	0
Barney Stanley	yes	101	265	190	94	284	257
Steamer Maxwell	yes	100	37	20	12	32	63
Shorty Green	yes	100	126	75	18	93	183
Rusty Crawford	yes	100	303	165	69	234	435
Harry Hyland	yes	100	155	192	34	226	398
Bernie Morris	no	99	237	202	83	285	139
Corb Denneny	no	98	350	225	72	297	365
Harry Smith	no	92	112	246	8	254	229
Dubbie Kerr	no	91	166	191	45	236	340
Eddie Oatman	no	85	320	198	101	299	456
Tony Conroy	no	84	186	54	14	68	80
Art Gagne	no	82	395	179	90	269	434
Louis Berlinguette	no	80	346	92	57	149	304
Odie Cleghorn	no	77	299	231	65	296	444
Herb Drury	no	72	294	59	16	75	205
Cully Wilson	no	65	355	204	85	289	814
Fred Harris	no	61	282	175	81	256	449
Conn Smythe	no	60	5	2	0	2	0
Bert McCaffrey	no	52	321	103	49	152	202
Jack McDonald	no	34	244	195	59	254	179
Carson Cooper	no	33	341	215	74	289	97
Ty Arbour	no	31	370	137	69	206	184
Don Smith	no	27	189	189	27	216	359
Billy Boucher	no	25	252	116	41	157	442
Sibby Nichols	no	21	99	102	27	129	150
Harry Meeking	no	17	274	106	41	147	330
Charley Tobin	no	14	201	154	39	193	139
Jimmy Herbert	no	11	238	89	33	122	255
Ken Mallen	no	10	182	182	27	209	277
Harry Scott	no	9	123	178	7	185	182
Alf Skinner	no	9	257	117	32	149	432
Carl Kendall	no	8	67	33	19	52	52
Skene Ronan	no	5	138	108	25	133	244

Hall of Fame Standards for the Major-League Era (Part One)

Any longtime fan of hockey knows that the identity of the players in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and of the players who have not been inducted, can be a source of great debate among the faithful. Almost everyone has a favoured played they really feel deserve the honour, and can name several players already in the Hall that probably shouldn't be there, especially not ahead of their preferred hockeyist. These disagreements arise not only because of the selection committee's opaqueness when it comes to the selection process, but also because there are obviously no objective standards as to who should be a Hall-of-Famer and who should not. You cannot look at a player's career, add up all his awards and accomplishments, compare the total to a chart, and arrive at a “yes” or “no” answer. It's just not that simple.

However, even though there are no objective standards, we can try to figure out whether the Hall of Fame selection committee has any implicit standards; that is, standards that can be determined based on who has been inducted into the Hall of Fame, and just as importantly who has not, in a sort of reverse engineering of the selection standards. Such a system could be used to discuss past selections, but perhaps more interestingly it could also be used to predict future inductees based on the career records of active or recently-retired players. So, can we examine the career statistical records of Hall-of-Famers and non-Hall-of-Famers, and come up with a formula that represents the basis the selection committee apparently used to select the players for the honour?

As it turns out, we can derive these standards, and we call the resulting system the Inductinator. The Inductinator calculates a score for every hockey player, and any player who achieves a score of 100 or more meets the implicit standards of the Hall of Fame selection committee. It's important to remember that this system is not concerned with who should or should not be in the Hockey Hall of Fame, but rather to determine whether there are any set of standards that the selection committee could have used for the honourees. It's descriptive rather than prescriptive; it does not deal with what should be, but what is.

The Inductinator results for players whose careers were primarily after 1930 make up the bulk of my contribution to Hockey Abstract 2014, available now. Here at Hockey Historysis, I'm going to take it back even further, and today we're going to look at the Inductinator for players whose careers primarily spanned 1912 to 1929, which I refer to the as the "major-league era" here, since it was the first time that competition for the the Stanley Cup was restricted to the major professional league or leagues (NHA, NHL, PCHA, WCHL and WHL).

Like later eras, the system addresses forwards, defencemen and goaltenders separately. Later eras are generally easier, because of greater consistency in the statistics (since top players only played in one league for the most part) and because of the existence of annual individual awards. So while I was able to arrive at implicit standards that perfectly discriminate between Hall-of-Famers and non-Hall-of-Famers for 1930 and beyond, it's to be expected that earlier eras are more difficult. And indeed, there are some players from this era that I am not able to statistically make a Hall-of-Famer without also elevating dozens of other players who have not been honoured to the minimum score of 100. But it's actually only three players that I cannot account for, although a couple of others require something of a cheat to get them in, as we'll see. Just like in the Hockey Abstract, I'm going to go position-by-position, starting in goal.


Hall of Fame Standards for Major-League Era Goaltenders
 
As it turns out, the goaltenders for this era are really, really easy to develop implicit standards for. So easy, in fact, that there is an almost limitless number of ways in which you could do it. Also, you could do it with a single one of a number of statistics.

For example, as you can see below, for goaltenders who played primarily in this era, there are only five netminders who played at least 333 top-level games, and they're all in the Hall of Fame. So you could say that any goalie who played at least 11 major-league seasons is a Hall-of-Famer. You could even say that any goalie who won a Stanley Cup as a starter is a Hall-of-Famer. There are other goalies who won a Cup in the years 1912 to 1929, however their careers were primarily after this era, and so are not included in this group.

Of course I did not want to use any of these simplistic ideas for the Inductinator, so I put together something that seemed reasonable, considering not only the Hall-of-Famers but other goalies as well. I'll use Georges Vezina to illustrate. Vezina played 15 seasons of top-level hockey; he gets seven points for each of those seasons beyond the eighth, for 49 points. He gets 40 points for winning at least one Stanley Cup as a starter, and since he had at least one win for every two games played, he earned points there as well. He receives one point for each .001 that his winning percentage (wins divided by games played) exceeds .460, for 67 points. He died tragically in mid-career, and the Hall of Fame loves that kind of thing, so he gets 40 points for that as well. He also gets the maximum 30 points for his career games played. This brings his total to 226, well above the 100 minimum and more than any other netminder of the era. Note that for career statistics, for seasons before 1926/27 we consider professional stats, and after that season NHL stats only.

The only thing Vezina misses out on is points for his GAA relative to league average. He had a career GAA of 3.40, which the league average for the seasons in which he played was 3.41. He would have received points if his GAA was .90 of the league average or less. Alec Connell, for instance, meets the Inductinator standard with his GAA alone, earning 114 points that way. It should be noted that while Percy LeSueur and especially Paddy Moran look bad by GAA, they played largely in earlier times than the others, when scoring was much higher. For the first half of Moran's career, he played in leagues that featured more than six goals per game.

GOALTENDER	HoF	SCORE	GP	W	GAA
Georges Vezina	yes	226	328	173	3.41
Alec Connell	yes	205	417	193	1.91
Clint Benedict	yes	203	440	239	2.44
Hugh Lehman	yes	181	422	220	3.29
Percy LeSueur	yes	178	170	98	4.31
Hap Holmes	yes	140	409	198	2.81
Paddy Moran	yes	107	206	98	5.24
Hal Winkler	no	83	203	100	2.28
Bert Lindsay	no	64	150	66	5.37
Jake Forbes	no	26	210	85	2.76
Charles Stewart	no	18	77	30	2.45
Hec Fowler	no	17	186	83	3.64
Bill Laird	no	10	53	30	2.96

Hall of Fame Standards for Major-League Era Defencemen
 
Defencemen are a much more varied group than the goaltenders when it comes to Hall-of-Famers. There are 15 honoured defenders from this era, compared to five goaltenders. It is worth noting that  players are included in this era if they had even one full season after 1911. This is the only way we can make sense of the inclusion or exclusion of certain players.

Defencemen receive points from many things for their Inductinator score. Games played (adjusted to consider any seasons missed due to military service), points scored and points per game are all important. The number of senior seasons played, and the number played at the highest level are also considered. Stanley Cups won, and being the captain of a Stanley Cup champion are also very important. The number of years that the defenceman was a player-coach is included, and if he had a very long career as a coach after his playing days were over, he received some points for that. Players whose careers were ended early by injury or death have an adjustment for this fact.

Since Québec-born Francophone players and US-trained players were fairly rare in this time period, such players receive a bonus to their Inductinator scores. Without this adjustment, it would be extremely difficult to see how Jack Laviolette had a Hall-of-Fame career.

One player from this era that you might have wondered about is Gordon "Phat" Wilson, the great senior player for Port Arthur. Wilson never played professionally, and never played in the best senior leagues either. What he did do, and what it seems the Hall of Fame selection committee wished to reward, is be in the Allan Cup playdowns year in and year out. His teams qualified for the Allan Cup eight times and won the championship three times, and Wilson played 41 Allan Cup matches, scoring 29 points as a defenceman. No one else from this era can match these accomplishments, and as such it seems clear that Allan Cup play is what earned Phat Wilson his place in the Hall.

The only one that I simply cannot explain with any kind of implicit standards is George McNamara. Although he was a very famous player in his day, especially in conjunction with his brother Howard with whom he shared the moniker "Dynamite Twins" due to their powerful body-checking, there is nothing remarkable about his career. If anything, his brother Howard had the more impressive career, and yet it is George who is in the Hall of Fame. Here he scores a big fat zero on the Inductinator as a player, and I cannot provide any reason for him to have been inducted based on his days as a player.

The only thing that makes him stand out from his brother is that after his career, he was the coach of an Allan-Cup winning team, with Sault Ste. Marie in 1924. For some early players, the selection committee clearly did consider post-playing career accomplishments, as we will see. But it would be incredible to say that an Allan Cup championship as a coach for a former player would be worth, by itself, selection to the Hall of Fame. This was during probably the toughest era for the Allan Cup, since it was after a formal playoff system was instituted for the Allan Cup, and before the establishment of minor-league hockey which siphoned off so many quality senior players. Moreover, Eddie Carpenter, who scores at nine on the Inductinator for his playing career, was the coach of Port Arthur as they won two Allan Cups in 1925 and 1926. So if McNamara were to be enshrined for this accomplishment, surely Carpenter would have been as well. This strongly suggests tells us that this was not the implicit standard that McNamara benefited from. I gave both McNamara and Carpenter 20 points for this accomplishment, but that only puts George up to 20, though it does move him ahead of his brother who scores 17 based on his playing career.

McNamara's score of zero as a player led me to a deep search for anything that made him stand out. I decided to check newspaper reports from the time that he was selected for the Hall of Fame, and made what could turn out to be a rather startling discovery. I checked several different Canadian newspapers from April 28, 1958, and they all say the same thing when discussing the newly-elected members of the Hall of Fame for that year. Here is an example from the Regina Leader-Post:

"NEW NAMES

Those added were:

Builders. Senator Donat Raymond, Montreal; the late George McNamara, Toronto; George Dudley, Midland, Ont.; the late Jim Norris Sr., Detroit; Conn Smythe, Toronto; Al Pickard, Regina; and Lloyd Turner, Calgary.

Players with the teams they were most closely identified with. Frank Boucher, New York; Frank (King) Clancy, Ottawa and Toronto..."

George McNamara was listed as a builder, not as a player. Now, it remains entirely possible that the media was given erroneous information, and that McNamara was in fact supposed to be listed as a player. Indeed the Hockey Hall of Fame itself lists him as an Honoured Player. Frankly, his selection would make a great deal more sense in the builder category. A SIHR member related to me that McNamara contributed a substantial amount of cash toward the construction of the International Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston, and that he was generally quite philanthropic after his playing career was done, so it would make a great deal more sense as a basis for his induction than what he did on the ice.

However, it seems that this is ultimately a red herring, that the player category is where McNamara was inducted. This was confirmed by a SIHR member via a contact at the Hall of Fame. But yet another SIHR member, Andrew Ross, actually blogged about the McNamara induction a few years ago. He noted that in a letter, Frank Selke Sr. (who was a member of the Hall of Fame selection committee) wrote that "when George was admitted [to the Hall] Howard's wife told a friend of mine that George could not carry Howard's skates. I asked [Art] Ross and Lester [Patrick] about this and they said, which one was Howard?"

So perhaps it was supposed to be Howard. He would certainly have been a better choice based on his playing career, but the Inductinator still would not have been able to justify it. The McNamaras were a bit larger than life, and perhaps their reputation was all that was needed. Regardless, the selection of George McNamara is surrounded by quite a bit of confusion.

Next time we will look at the forwards from this era.

DEFENCEMAN	HoF	SCORE	GP	G	A	PTS	PIM
Eddie Gerard	yes	249	250	170	76	246	325
George Boucher	yes	218	496	151	91	242	927
Sprague Cleghorn	yes	209	377	174	105	279	849
Lester Patrick	yes	206	227	169	71	240	187
Harry Cameron	yes	180	350	220	95	315	490
Reg Noble	yes	173	541	195	109	304	982
Art Ross	yes	164	185	98	34	132	563
Joe Hall	yes	141	240	159	40	199	913
Moose Johnson	yes	109	257	122	50	172	505
Herb Gardiner	yes	109	277	76	47	123	147
Jack Laviolette	yes	102	235	98	34	132	489
Joe Simpson	yes	100	397	127	76	203	274
Si Griffis	yes	100	149	83	43	126	181
Phat Wilson	yes	100	117	56	24	80	148
Bobby Rowe	no	99	291	123	56	179	567
Goldie Prodger	no	91	234	115	40	155	262
Frank Patrick	no	88	124	105	38	143	106
Clem Loughlin	no	80	383	80	44	124	342
Art Duncan	no	80	382	96	69	165	406
Lloyd Cook	no	74	231	114	59	173	210
Walter Smaill	no	68	140	101	35	136	231
Hamby Shore	no	67	189	121	31	152	566
Bert Corbeau	no	60	341	83	55	128	939
Billy Coutu	no	57	300	45	21	67	532
Percy Traub	no	51	318	32	34	66	551
Leo Reise	no	50	329	80	54	134	276
Duke Dukowski	no	42	356	66	48	114	424
Muzz Murray	no	42	126	44	4	52	69
Gord Fraser	no	30	279	63	31	94	495
Eddie Carpenter	no	29	192	52	12	64	330
Bobby Trapp	no	28	257	47	45	92	264
Harry Mummery	no	27	239	62	32	94	602
George McNamara	yes	20	139	37	17	54	291
Slim Halderson	no	19	218	62	44	106	318
Howard McNamara	no	17	152	54	20	74	456

Hockey Abstract 2014 - Out Now!

One project I've been working on this summer is contributing to a new edition of Rob Vollman's Hockey Abstract. I've known Rob for a very long time, since early on in the internet hockey analytics days when I was publishing research on Puckerings.com. He wrote and published the first edition of the Abstract last year. This year, he recruited me and another long-time chum of ours, Tom Awad (of GVT fame) to contribute to it. We're very excited to be able to work on a project like this together after all these years, and I think we've put together a very solid product.

Hockey Abstract 2014 is primarily devoted to the analysis of current players and teams, of course. However, my main contribution to the book is a thorough discussion of the players in the Hall of Fame. The Inductinator was a tool I developed at Hockey Prospectus, designed to predict future Hall-of-Fame inductees based on data from the modern (post-expansion) players who were already in the Hall. It was an attempt to discover implicit Hall-of-Fame standards; it is meant to predict who will be honoured, not necessarily who should be. Anyone with a score of 100 or more on the Inductinator is expected to be a Hall-of-Famer, with higher scores having shorter waiting times than lower scores.

For the Abstract, I first refined my model based on recent Hall of Fame inductions, but being me I wasn't happy just discussing the present and future, I wanted to go back in time as well. So I extended the Inductinator all the way back to 1930, when the NHL adopted essentially modern offside rules. Although I was initially skeptical that I would be able to do so, ultimately I was actually able to develop implicit standards for all players back to 1930 such that every player who is in the Hall of Fame scores at least 100, while every player who is not scores at most 99. So the Inductinator actually performs two functions: not only are we able to predict future Hall-of-Famers with it, but we can shed some light on past Hall-of-Famers as well, to see what the selection committee has apparently considered to be important in selecting players.

Although in the Abstract I only take the analysis back to 1930, I have also extended the Inductinator back to the beginning of the first hockey league in Canada, in 1886. I have not been able to achieve a 100% success rate at isolating Hall-of-Famers from the other players before 1930, however there are only a few exceptions. Next week I will be posting some discussion of early Hall-of-Famers so you can see what I mean.

In the meantime, please have a look at the 2014 edition of Hockey Abstract. I don't think you'll be disappointed. It's available in both print and PDF formats.

The Probably-Not-Meritorious Men of the 1920s

Note: This time of year could be called the Tax Season Lull around here, since what I do for a living eats seriously into the time I have available for more important pursuits, such as writing about obscure hockey players from history that no one cares about. It should pick up again in May.

To complete our look at potential Hall of Famers from the 1920s, we have the bottom tier. These men were very good players indeed, but although some of them were honoured with inducted, it's difficult to make a case for them based on the results of their careers.

Rank	Player	Pos	GP	TPAK	Score	Hall?
34	ADAMS, Jack	5	849	2.56	72.9	Yes
35	BAILEY, Ace	7	784	2.77	70.9	Yes
36	BURCH, Billy	5	962	2.67	70.5	Yes
37	MUNRO, Dunc	3	688	3.22	70.5	No
X	TRAUB, Percy	3	1025	2.29	65.8	No
X	WILSON, Phat	3	1067	2.51	65.3	Yes
X	TRAPP, Bobby	3	809	2.47	62.5	No
X	HIMES, Norm	57	943	2.52	61.8	No
X	WATSON, Harry	5	462	3.29	61.4	Yes
X	GREEN, Wilf	7	674	2.40	57.0	Yes
X	GREEN, Red	6	666	2.29	56.9	No
X	GOHEEN, Moose	3	578	2.54	54.9	Yes

At the top of the list is Jack Adams, who was a very effective centre in his prime, but didn't have enough good years to really be considered an elite player. Surely his lengthy tenure as GM and coach of the Red Wings did nothing to colour the memories of his abilities as a player.

Ace Bailey's induction is a tragic one, in the sense that he was inducted due to a tragedy. Bailey had one outstanding season in 1928/29, but other than that was good-not-great. His injury probably didn't prevent his meritoriousness, since his offensive production had already dropped considerable before Eddie Shore's hit.

Billy Burch was more famous than his ability suggests he should have been. He rep was embiggened by promoters when the Hamilton Tigers moved to New York, being called the Babe Ruth of Hockey in an effort to draw fans to the games. He was very good, but did not deserve the Hart Trophy he won in 1925, and has not real claim on a spot in the Hall of Fame. Burch's linemate Wilf Green is an even worse selection; he barely even beats out his brother Red in terms of meritoriousness, but his fame as the leader of the Hamilton players strike created name recognition that his play could not.

That leaves us with Phat Wilson, Harry Watson and Moose Goheen. These three are similar in the sense that none of them played at the highest level of the game; only Goheen even played professionally, in the minor leagues from 26/27 to 31/32. They all benefit from this fact, because they never had to play against the very best competition available. Memories of their play can therefore easily be overestimated. Although I'm missing much of Goheen's early career, the numbers we do have don't suggest Hall-of-Fame calibre. Neither do Wilson's; he was the best player in a fairly weak league (Thunder Bay senior league), which grew even weaker when the minor professional leagues become organized in 1926/27.

Harry Watson is a bit different. Although surely inducted for his performance in the 1924 Olympics, Watson was in fact an excellent player, one who could have most likely had a very good NHL career should he have chosen that route. He effectively retired from hockey at age 26, as so many amateur players did, playing only a game or two per season after that. If he had a full-length professional career, he'd be much closer to the "maybe yes" line here, although he lacked the (at least) one really big season most Hall-of-Famers have.

The Maybe-Meritorious Men of the 1920s

Last time we looked at players whose career was centred in the 1920s, and who probably merited election to the Hall of Fame, based on their TPAK results. Today we take a step down, and examine the next tier of players, those who might deserve the honour, but might not.

The list is below. We know the actual Hall of Fame got 19 of the top 21 players "right" - they only missed two of the deserving players from this era. We can see that only three of the 12 players in this tier have been given hockey's highest honour: Frank Fredrickson, Babe Dye and Punch Broadbent.

Rank	Player	Pos	GP	TPAK	Score	Hall?
22	FREDRICKSON, Frank	5	1150	3.15	84.9	Yes
23	ROACH, John Ross	G	1094	3.30	84.6	No
24	GAGNE, Art	7	952	3.36	83.5	No
25	DYE, Babe	7	783	3.42	83.3	Yes
26	HITCHMAN, Lionel	3	822	3.53	83.0	No
27	DUNCAN, Art	3	1130	3.00	80.6	No
28	BROADBENT, Punch	7	1156	2.74	79.3	Yes
29	ABEL, Taffy	3	798	3.53	78.8	No
30	WINKLER, Hal	G	1159	2.88	77.3	No
31	LeDUC, Albert	3	749	3.28	76.1	No
32	CORBEAU, Bert	3	1162	2.67	75.0	No
33	REISE, Leo	3	1008	3.02	74.6	No

I can't argue with the inclusion of Fredrickson and Dye, but I'm not sure about Broadbent. He had one massive season in 1921/22, but other than that he produced solid but un-outstanding years. On the other hand, he did miss three full seasons to the war, in his prime hockey years. Three more seasons of 3.50 TPAK or so would certainly lift him up to the "probably yes" level rather than the "probably no." So it depends on whether you think players should be given credit for hockey they might have played if not for major international conflicts.

It would lead to the sticky situation of his being deemed meritous, while the player directly above him, Art Duncan, would not. Duncan, a defenceman who spent most of his career in Western Canada, is very close to being deserving, to my eyes. But he never had that one huge season that most Hall-of-Famers have. He did lead the PCHA in scoring in 1923/24, but of course he played left wing that season, not defence. As a blueliner he contributed to the offence but was merely good in his own end. I think his career is just not quite good enough for the Hall, and the actual voters have agreed to date.

Just above Duncan on the list is Lionel Hitchman, who I think probably deserves to be called a meritous man. He was a hard-rock defenceman, and his presence this high on the list is a testament to the ability of the Point Allocation system to recognize the excellence of stay-at-home blueliners. Hitchman is credited with only 8.2 offensive points in his NHL career (not a complete zero, but very low), but 68.7 points for his defence.

I would draw the line below Hitchman. Players like Taffy Abel and Battleship LeDuc, both physical defencemen, don't have quite enough to their careers to deserve the honour, though at their best they were very good indeed. Bert Corbeau and Leo Reise, on the other hand, have length to their careers but not depth. Neither were truly among the very best defenceman of their time. Hal Winkler is a personal favourite of mine, but I couldn't honestly recommend him for the Hall either. He too was never an elite player, "merely" an excellent one.

The Meritorious Men of the 1920s

To continue our look at Hall of Fame inductees versus TPAK results (previously discussed: the 1910s, 1900s, and the earliest years), we go on to the 1920s.

In an unsurprising development, the Hall of Fame voters continue to agree with the TPAK results to a greater degree as time goes on, and as they get into players they had the greatest chance of being directly familiar with. In the case of players whose careers were centred in the 1920s (see table below), we find the top 17 players (and 19 of the top 21) have actually been inducted into the Hall of Fame. The only ones that have been missed out are Carson Cooper and Corb Denneny.

Carson "Shovel-Shot" Cooper was a dominant scorer for the Hamilton Tigers of the OHA in the early 1920s, leading his senior league in goals three times and points twice; in 1923/24 he scored 33 goals in 10 games and finished his OHA career with 108 goals in 55 games. Signed by the Boston Bruins in November 1924, it didn't take long for Cooper to make an impact in the NHL. In 1925/26, he finished second in the league in goals, behind only the legendary Nels Stewart, and was third in points. In 1928/29 he was in Detroit (and 32 years old), and though his raw numbers were less impressive (due to the scoring environment of the league at that time), he was third in goals and tied for third in points.

Cooper is found deserving of the Hall because his OHA numbers are not ignored. He had only two NHL seasons among the best scorers, but it must be remembered that he didn't play his first professional game until the age of 27. This means his NHL career was played mostly in the decline phase of his career. Point Allocation, however, doesn't pretend that the NHL is the only league that matters at this time of the game's history. So Cooper's thoroughly impressive OHA production is given the full credit it deserves.

Corb Denneny, lesser-known than his Hall-of-Fame brother Cy, had a 19-year senior/professional career. Though never the best centre in his league, his consistency and longevity are what earns him Hall-of-Fame-level merit here. Being just below the very best for an extended period of time is quite remarkable in itself.

I see every player listed on the table below as deserving of being in the Hall of Fame, based on their TPAK results. And speaking of longevity, check out George Hainsworth's career. He managed 1611 effective games played, which is the equivalent of playing a full 80-game schedule for 20 seasons, plus a bit. Hainsworth played his first senior hockey in the OHA (at the age of 17) in 1912/13, a full 11 years before he would play his first professional game. After 11 seasons of senior-level amateur hockey (all but one of which was played in Berlin, later Kitchener), he began a 14-year major-pro career, retiring at the age of 41. Like Cooper, Hainsworth gets credit for this time in the OHA, which was a high-quality league at the time and cannot simply be ignored because it was not professional.
  

Rank	Player	Pos	GP	TPAK	Score	Hall?
1	MORENZ, Howie	5	1116	4.67	124.8	Yes
2	HAINSWORTH, George	G	1611	3.84	116.9	Yes
3	COOK, Bill	7	1341	4.08	116.7	Yes
4	BOUCHER, Buck	3	1304	4.16	112.9	Yes
5	JOLIAT, Aurel	6	1328	3.86	109.7	Yes
6	NIGHBOR, Frank	5	1286	3.77	109.3	Yes
7	BENEDICT, Clint	G	1319	3.95	108.6	Yes
8	CONACHER, Lionel	3	1177	4.08	105.9	Yes
9	OLIVER, Harry	75	1332	3.58	105.3	Yes
10	CLANCY, King	3	1185	4.04	102.7	Yes
11	MacKAY, Mickey	54	1289	3.53	99.3	Yes
12	DENNENY, Cy	6	1241	3.63	98.0	Yes
13	NOBLE, Reg	35	1382	3.45	96.2	Yes
14	GARDINER, Herb	3	946	3.75	94.7	Yes
15	KEATS, Duke	5	1001	3.57	90.4	Yes
16	SIMPSON, Joe	3	1193	3.42	90.2	Yes
17	DUTTON, Red	3	1282	3.29	90.1	Yes
18	COOPER, Carson	7	1023	3.38	88.5	No
19	DENNENY, Corb	5	1267	3.02	86.9	No
20	HAY, George	6	955	3.50	85.8	Yes
21	CONNELL, Alec	G	776	3.73	85.2	Yes

The Meritorious Men of the 1910s

To finish up our look at players from hockey's early years who merit the honour of being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, we look at players whose careers centred on the 1910s. We start with the very best from that decade:

1910s Players Who Likely Merit the Hall of Fame

Rank	Player	Seasons	Position	Score	Hall?
1	Taylor, Cyclone	1906-1923	42	116.5	Yes
2	Lalonde, Newsy	1905-1926	5	113.4	Yes
3	Pitre, Didier	1904-1923	72	110.3	Yes
4	Johnson, Moose	1904-1922	36	108.1	Yes
5	Patrick, Lester	1904-1926	34	103.5	Yes
6	Gerard, Eddie	1910-1923	36	103.1	Yes
7	Smith, Tommy	1906-1920	5	102.9	Yes
8	Vezina, Georges	1911-1926	G	102.7	Yes
9	Lehman, Hugh	1907-1926	G	101.9	Yes
10	Malone, Joe	1909-1924	5	101.7	Yes
11	Cleghorn, Sprague	1910-1926	32	97.0	Yes
12	Holmes, Hap	1910-1926	G	96.9	Yes
13	Foyston, Frank	1912-1926	56	96.0	Yes
14	Walker, Jack	1908-1926	46	95.7	Yes
15	Cleghorn, Odie	1910-1926	75	94.8	No
16	Cameron, Harry	1912-1926	32	94.5	Yes
17	Darragh, Jack	1910-1924	7	89.5	Yes
18	Irvin, Dick	1913-1926	5	89.2	Yes
19	Hall, Joe	1901-1919	37	88.6	Yes
20	Morris, Bernie	1911-1925	57	88.6	No
21	Prodger, Goldie	1911-1925	36	88.6	No

The Hall of Fame committee has done a very good job in recognizing the best players from this era. The top 14 players by the HOFPA (Hall of Fame by Point Allocation) method are all in the Hall, as are 18 of the top 19. The most notable player who's not in is Odie Cleghorn, who should have followed his brother Sprague into the temple, but did not for whatever reason. Sprague certainly made more noise with his career, for better or worse, but Odie was nearly his equal on the ice.

Bernie Morris is no surprise, here. As a member of the perennially powerful Seattle Mets, Morris led the PCHA in goals, assists and points on different occasions, and played in three Stanley Cup finals, including one with the Calgary Tigers.

Goldie Prodger is an interesting player, who will get a writeup here in due time, like all of these players. George Prodger is a pretty obscure player; it was many years before researchers even got his name consistently right - he was often called Prodgers in the past. I believe it was Jeff Klein and Karl-Eric Reif, in their Hockey Compendium, who first noticed that when Prodger joined a team, it got better immediately, and when he left a team it fell just as quickly. He skated for eight different high-level professional teams and was versatile, mostly playing defence but also manning either left wing or right as the team's needs dictated.

1910s Players Who Possibly Merit the Hall of Fame

Rank	Player	Seasons	Position	Score	Hall?
22	Harris, Smokey	1911-1925	6	87.8	No
23	Griffis, Si	1902-1919	34	87.0	Yes
24	Rowe, Bobby	1903-1926	37	85.8	No
25	Cook, Lloyd	1913-1925	32	85.4	No
26	LeSueur, Percy	1904-1916	G	85.1	Yes
27	Dunderdale, Tommy	1907-1924	45	85.1	Yes
28	Stanley, Barney	1912-1926	62	83.6	Yes
29	Shore, Hamby	1905-1918	2	83.1	No
30	Laviolette, Jack	1904-1918	17	82.4	Yes
31	Roberts, Gord	1910-1920	6	79.7	Yes
32	Ross, Art	1905-1918	1	78.8	Yes
33	Oatman, Eddie	1910-1926	47	78.8	No
34	Hyland, Harry	1909-1918	7	78.1	Yes

The next group finds eight of 13 players in the Hall of Fame. How many of these deserve to be there? Several at the top of this list were missed by the committee; and all were largely western players, so perhaps that's not a coincidence (though if there is an eastern bias in the membership of the Hall, it's not a large one). But if Si Griffis, Percy LeSueur and Tommy Dunderdale deserve the honour, so do Smokey Harris, Bobby Rowe and Lloyd Cook.

Where do we draw the line here? I would put it under Barney Stanley. While his career strikes me as Hall-worthy, Hamby Shore's really does not. So there the line goes, cutting out (just barely) Jack Laviolette, Gord Roberts, Art Ross and Harry Hyland. Laviolette and Ross certainly got boosts from their hockey activities off the ice, and Roberts and Hyland, while excellent scorers, just don't quite have enough.

1910s Players Who Likely Do Not Merit the Hall of Fame

Rank	Player	Seasons	Position	Score	Hall?
35	Patrick, Frank	1904-1924	37	76.3	No
36	Loughlin, Clem	1911-1926	32	75.8	No
37	Crawford, Rusty	1911-1926	6	75.3	Yes
38	Smaill, Walter	1905-1918	24	75.0	No
X	Rankin, Frank	1911-1915	4	62.1	Yes
X	Baker, Hobey	1912-1916	4	60.3	Yes
X	Davidson, Scotty	1912-1914	72	55.8	Yes
X	McNamara, George	1907-1917	17	47.1	Yes
X	Ruttan, Jack	1909-1918	2	46.8	Yes
X	Maxwell, Steamer	1910-1915	4	6.7	Yes

Although the committee did a good job according to the top of this list, they did a fairly poor one according to the bottom. Rusty Crawford had a very long pro career, first playing in Saskatchewan in 1910 and lasting until the 1929/30 season in Minneapolis. His selection is certainly not a terrible one. It's the names at the bottom of the list that are problematic.


Hobey Baker we've discussed before, and won't rehash here. Scotty Davidson us a very similar case, a player with a few very good seasons who was killed in World War I. If he had continued to play at a high level when he returned, he might very well have a case. But once you start playing "what if" with these things, it's rather hard to know where to stop.


Fred "Steamer" Maxwell had a short and unremarkable senior career in Winnipeg. That he coached the Winnipeg Falcons to the very first Olympic hockey gold medal surely had nothing to do with his presence in the Hall as a player, right?

By a remarkable coincidence, the coach of the second team to ever win an Olympic gold medal in hockey, Frank Rankin, was also a Hall of Fame-calibre player. He wasn't actually, of course. Although he was far more effective on the ice than Maxwell was, he was not one of the very best. Subsequent events have a way of affecting people's memories of earlier ones.

George McNamara also helped his case with his coaching career, winning the 1924 Allan Cup as Canadian senior champs. George and his brother Howard were big (over six feet at a time when that was rare) bruisers as blueliners, laying the body with gusto likely unmatched at the time. They were called the "Dynamite Twins", and played for a number of pro teams. (A third brother, Harold, also played professionally, but was not in the same class as the other two.) As such, they had big names to match their big frames, but this was not necessarily equaled by their actual performance on the ice. In fact, George may not have even been the best player in his family. He recorded 27.1 TPA in 644 effective games played, while Howard put up 28.8 in 669.

I've never been able to find the reason that Jack Ruttan was enshrined. He had a short, decent senior career in Winnipeg, won the 1913 Allan Cup as a player, went to war and coached and refereed in Winnipeg for a few years after his playing days were done. He's not the worst selection ever made, but he could be the most puzzling. There's no easy explanation for why he was picked out of any number of senior players from his day.

The Meritorious Players of the 1900s

Continuing the examination of the players who should (probably) be in the Hall of Fame from hockey's early era, we now apply the HOFPA (Hall of Fame by Point Allocation) method to players whose careers centred on the 1900s.

1900s Players Who Likely Merit the Honour

Rank	Player	Seasons	Position	Score	Hall?
1	Bowie, Russell	1899-1910	4	136.7	Yes
2	Pulford, Harvey	1894-1908	1	99.6	Yes
3	Marshall, Jack	1900-1917	51	99.1	Yes
4	Smith, Harry	1905-1914	5	95.5	No
5	Phillips, Tommy	1901-1912	6	91.2	Yes
6	Walsh, Marty	1903-1912	54	86.8	Yes
7	Russell, Ernie	1905-1914	5	86.7	Yes
8	McGee, Frank	1903-1906	5	86.0	Yes
9	Moran, Paddy	1901-1917	G	86.2	Yes
10	Stuart, Hod	1899-1907	2	82.0	Yes
11	Jordan, Herb	1903-1911	5	81.7	No
12	Westwick, Rat	1895-1909	4	81.3	Yes

Russell Bowie is far and away the player with the most notable career from this era. He had several seasons that are simply massive, with his best being 1901, when he scored 24 goals despite missing one of his team's eight scheduled matches. The next-highest goal-scorer had 10 goals. Bowie scored more goals in seven games than the entire Quebec team did in eight games. The result it a TPAK of 8.57, which is far and away the best single season for the data set I currently have, which goes up to 1926. He also has the third-, seventh- and seventeenth-best seasons as well. I haven't done the calculations for Wayne Gretzky yet, but it's possible Bowie might approach the Great One's level of dominance. He was that good.

As you can see, the Hall of Fame committee did quite a good job at honouring the very best players from this decade.  Among these very best players, only Harry Smith and Herb Jordan have not been recognized by the Hall. I've posted about Smith before; Jordan has likely been overlooked since he played for Quebec in an era when Quebec rarely had a championship team. Jordan was sometimes the only really good player on his team.

1900s Players Who Might Merit the Honour

Rank	Player	Seasons	Position	Score	Hall?
13	Russel, Blair	1900-1910	6	78.6	Yes
14	Boon, Dickie	1900-1905	2	76.9	Yes
15	Lake, Fred	1903-1915	16	75.8	No
16	Breen, Billy	1901-1909	4	75.5	No
17	Hern, Riley	1897-1911	G	75.0	Yes
18	Smith, Alf	1895-1909	7	74.7	Yes
19	Stuart, Bruce	1900-1911	54	74.1	Yes
20	McGimsie, Billy	1899-1907	5	73.7	Yes
21	Hutton, Bouse	1899-1909	G	70.0	Yes

Among the maybes, most have been honoured by the Hall already. I would personally draw the line after Alf Smith. I think he deserves the honour, while Bruce Stuart probably does not. Hod's brother has too many mediocre seasons on his resume to be considered one of the best of his era, in my opinion.

This line would mean that both Fred Lake and Billy Breen deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. I would certainly support the induction of Breen, a Winnipeg hockey superstar, but Fred Lake is something of a surprise here. Lake started his pro career as something of a nomad, playing mostly left wing in the IHL, then later in Manitoba. He then joined the Ottawa Senators in 1909, and played point (the second-most important defensive position) for a defensively dominant team for several years, and these seasons are really what elevate his career to this level.

1900s Players Who Likely Don't Merit the Honour

Rank	Player	Seasons	Position	Score	Hall?
22	Hooper, Art	1902-1904	4	69.9	No
X	Richardson, George	1904-1909	6	65.5	Yes
X	Hooper, Tom	1902-1908	27	61.2	Yes
X	Gardner, Jimmy	1901-1915	6	59.2	Yes
X	Whitcroft, Fred	1907-1910	4	48.7	Yes
X	Scanlan, Fred	1898-1903	6	48.2	Yes
X	Gilmour, Billy	1903-1909	74	34.4	Yes

Here is where we see where the Hall of Fame committee went wrong, as seen by this method. Tom Hooper was inducted due his playing for the Kenora Thistles, alongside Tommy Phillips and Si Griffis (two legitimate Hall-of-Famers), and Billy McGimsie (who's also in but probably doesn't quite deserve it). If the team really had that many of the very best players at the time, they would likely have won more than they actually did.

Fred Scanlan was apparently a matter of completing the Montreal Shamrocks line with Harry Trihey and Art Farrell, and only Trihey really comes close to deserving the honour.

George Richardson was an OHA player who later fought and died in World War I. War heroes have a history of being honoured by the Hall of Fame, regardless of what their hockey career actually entailed. Later events make their career seem better that they actually were.

Jimmy Gardner had a long pro career, but a mid-level one. However, he played an important role in the founding of the game most historic franchise, and this association apparently made his playing career look better in retrospect.

Billy Gilmour is a puzzler. He really only had a couple of good years in Ottawa, and they were only good, not great.

Fred Whitcroft is another head-scratcher. He made as big name for himself for a brief period by signing with the Kenora Thistles in 1907, and then heading to Edmonton to play for the pro team there, playing in three Stanley Cup challenges all told. But he has little more than name recognition going for him; he was a good player for a few years, but not nearly at the level needed to be considered one of the best of his time.

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 Class of 1945...and a Few Others

The Hockey Hall of Fame provides a brief summary of each of their Honoured Members at their website. Today I'm going to point out a few errors that have crept into their biographies of certain players, who are listed among the original group of 1945 inductees.

Dan Bain: The very first player (alphabetically) they have listed as being inducted in 1945 (the first year of the Hall) in Winnipeg Vics great, Dan Bain. The problem is, he was not inducted in 1945. He was inducted in 1949. All of the inductees in 1945 were posthumous, whereas Bain lived until 1962.

The only other issue I note with Bain's bio is the reference to the Manitoba Hockey League, which did not exist in Bain's time. He played in a league called the Manitoba and Northwest Hockey Association (MNWHA).

Russell Bowie: Third on the alphabetical list of the original 1945 inductees is Russell Bowie, one of the absolute all-time greats. Problem is, once again the induction year is wrong. Bowie was not honoured until 1947, in the second round of inductees. Like Bain, Bowie was still alive in 1945, and only deceased greats were honoured that year.

Bowie's bio also states that he retired from the game when the professional National Hockey Association was formed in 1909. That's not true; he ceased playing hockey at the very highest level after the 1907/08 season, when the Eastern Canada Hockey Association (ECHA) became a fully professional body. His Montreal Victorias, and the Montreal AAA club, both dropped from Canada's highest league and joined the new Inter-Provincial Amateur Hockey Union (IPAHU), a mildly successful effort to unite the top senior amateur players in the country. Bowie played two seasons in the IPAHU, tallying 27 goals in eight games.

Tommy Phillips: I'm not sure where they got the story that Phillips played right wing (instead of his usual left wing) because Alf Smith was ensconced on the left side. Alf Smith was a natural right wing, and always played that position so far as I know. And when I researched the 1907/08 ECAHA season myself some years ago, the game summaries had Phillips on the left and Smith on the right.

Art Ross: Ross did not die until 1964, and we know what that means by now. He was not inducted in 1945, but 1949. They also mention Ross' scoring exploits in his first senior season (1905), when he scored 10 goals in eight matches, which would be very impressive indeed for a defenceman. However, although Ross would play defence only from 1906 on, in 1905 he was a rover.

Hod Stuart: Stuart did not play point, as they claim, but cover-point, which was where offensively-gifted defencemen played. Playing in front of the point, the cover-point had more freedom to join the rush with the forwards. Stuart also played a bit of rover in his career, but was almost always on defence. He is also called a clean player in his bio, which would be unusual for someone credited with delivering punishing bodychecks. His 28 penalty minutes in eight games in the 1902 season suggest he wasn't as clean as all that. He also had 50 PIM in 21 games in 1906. Great player, yes; clean player, no.

Of the 12 players the Hall of Fame lists on their site as being inducted in the first class of 1945, only nine actually were. That's not a very good record. This has been passed along to the Hall through SIHR channels, so maybe by the time you read this, they'll have already corrected those errors.

Maybe someone out there can clean this up on Wikipedia as well, which uses the Hall of Fame site's information instead of accurate information. Only these nine men were inducted in 1945:

Hobey Baker
Charlie Gardiner
Eddie Gerard
Frank McGee
Howie Morenz
Tommy Phillips
Harvey Pulford
Hod Stuart
Georges Vezina

In future I might go through the bios of the players from other years, to see if there are any issues to be cleared up there as well.