Is there a dearth of active Hall of Famers?

[Victor 11,043]

One of the big topics worrying current VHLers is how the apparent fall in offensive production due to highly increased league parity will impact the Hall of Fame chances of today's VHL stars. It's a very valid point as it's very difficult to compare career stats of players currently in their prime with those in the past, even the likes of Podrick Cast and Matt Thompson, let alone Scotty Campbell and his contemporaries. There is a very real possibility that the top scorer in S71, be it Hunter Hearst Helmsley or Ambrose Stark, will not score 90 points, a continued downward trend after S69 became the first season of a sub-100 top scorer. The 40-goal mark, hitherto achieved by every single Kevin Brooks Trophy winner in VHL history, including Julius Freeman and Randoms (44 goals each) in the past 2 seasons, is also very much up in the air.

 

Goaltending has also not hugely benefited from the lower scoring in the league, although the overarching theory there is that goals haven't actually dried up across the league, they're just evenly distributed across a larger pool of skaters than before. Brick Wahl is having a fine career-ending season and will be a front-runner in the post-season MVP conversation but marks of .929 save % and 1.97 GAA will fall short of the superb season by Kallis Kriketers in S69, who in turn was some way off the single season performance of the past – DeGrath, the Cleganes, Wingate, Tukio, Labatte, and so on. Wahl and the rest of the S64 goalie cohort (Finn Davison and JB Rift) are also hurt by two other factors – the drop in all teams' and goalies' win columns and splitting their success. The all-time regular season win record of 364 set by Greg Clegane requires an average of 45 wins per season across an 8-season career whereas most goalies on contending teams average 30-40 per season currently. Most importantly, the fact that each of Wahl, Davison, and Rift have had one big trophy winning season each and also limited playoff success, Rift's championship win as a backup notwithstanding, is the primary reason their Hall of Fame chances are limited.

 

This brings us to the crux of the issue; is there a dearth of active future Hall of Famers in the league? S71 is an interesting case study because we have just seen the retirement of 3 likely Hall of Famers – Kriketers, Julian Borwinn, and Joseph McWolf – and with no one standing out in the S64 class, there is a lack of shoe-ins at the moment. This does not mean that there are none. For one, we have Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen, a 3-time Labatte Trophy winner and, until this season, the dominant force in a crowded pool of elite defencemen (what impact that will have on the rest of those defencemen's HOF chances remains to be seen). Then, Rayz Funk, who has been just slightly above average in the regular season, but remains the likeliest goalie to break out in his final seasons with a Kriketers/Wahl-like performance. More important for Funk is his playoff success to date, as his 3 playoff appearances so far with Seattle have earned him two Kanou Trophies and put him within reach of the all-time playoff wins record (51, held by Hans Wingate). Finally, the forwards. We have to assume now that for this generation a point-per-game pace is Hall of Fame worthy and this also correlates with the guys who have been in the top scorer/goalscorer races recently – HHH, Freeman, and Jet Jaguar. The fourth active player with a career PPG pace is Kronos Bailey, but he still played in a higher scoring league earlier in his career and is less likely to benefit from a lowered bar.

 

That gives us 5 likely active candidates for the Hall of Fame – Smitty, Funk, Freeman, HHH, and Jaguar. Naturally, I put these into a spreadsheet and then a graph:

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aYeYopb7_lkwbzLode1i5sUiHJDUy9FApaJ11pilWSE/edit?usp=sharing

 

 

According to this, S70 and S71 would have the lowest amount of active Hall of Famers, but of course I haven't taken anyone younger than Funk into consideration at all. It's highly unlikely no one from the S68-S71 classes makes it in, it's just too early to tell, but based on draft class averages in the past, it's probably safe to estimate at least another 5 currently active HOFers. That would put us into double digits, which is more or less par for the course, albeit a bit off the most HOFer-heavy seasons of the past.

 

However, it's important to note most of those seasons approaching the 20 HOFer mark were outliers. You have S5 through S7, when the S1 class of Campbell, Stolzschweiger, Labatte combined with the slightly younger generation of Brooks, Gegeny, Walser, Szatkowski. Then the S18 draft came around which produced 6 Hall of Famers of its own – naturally this would result in a spike when it overlapped with older (in S21) and younger (in S24 and S25) generations. Finally, the early 30s had the second wave of S18 recreates in their prime playing at the same time as the stars of the S30, S31 classes who would go on to dominate that decade.

 

Therefore, it's not all that bad. For the time being, some older records will remain untouchable but eras are often bestowed with greater importance than the actual stats of ballot members. So rest assured, if you are a star today, your Hall of Fame chances will not be jeopardised by the “dead puck era” that the VHL is currently in.

 

Member tag because it's the done thing: @Beaviss @Banackock @rjfryman @gorlab @Rayzor_7 @flyersfan1453 @BladeMaiden @Poptart @Devise @Quik @hedgehog337 @McWolf @Jubo07

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

I think you covered it, but no, there's not. The line for what is considered a HoF player will change based on their competition.

 

There are no more 3,000 win or 300 IP pitchers, but that doesn't mean none of the current baseball players will make the HoF.

[Esso2264 774]

#Ylonen4HOF

[Bayley 419]

Davison4HOF

 

I think if I wasn't on a rebuilding team for the majority of my career, I would be more into the higher case of being HOF. I think for that reason, I may not. 

[diamond_ace 3,114]

Just means @BladeMaiden has to get 12 shutouts now en route to a cup and playoff mvp. That might do it