I forgot to do hockey.
Well, it's not that I forgot so much as I got distracted and didn't think there were enough hockey fans on the card blogging blogosphere to have an opinion on how I classified such players as Chris Osgood, Patrice Bergeron, or Filip Forsberg. So I used my own judgment.
This past weekend I finally cleaned and organized my entire card collection. Everything is sorted and stored neat and tidy. My OCD is happy.. at least it would be, if I had put all my Pierre Turgeon cards in one place.
Somehow I managed to split my Turgeon cards into both the "star player box" and the binders. This was strange for two reasons: all of the cards in the box were from his years with the Montreal Canadiens but his Sabres, Islanders, and Blues cards were in my commons binders (as if I subconsciously decided he was only a star in Montreal?)
The second thing that irked me was that I really did not know which side Turgeon belonged on. He's not a Hall Of Famer (which would earn an automatic place in my box) but his numbers compare very favorably to many of his contemporaries - some of whom are in the HHOF (I've indicated those players in blue)
| first year | last year | Cups | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG | |
| Doug Gilmour | 1983 | 2003 | 1 | 450 | 964 | 1414 | 0.959 |
| Mike Modano | 1989 | 2011 | 1 | 561 | 813 | 1374 | 0.917 |
| Mats Sundin | 1990 | 2009 | 0 | 564 | 785 | 1349 | 1.002 |
| Pierre Turgeon | 1987 | 2007 | 0 | 515 | 812 | 1327 | 1.026 |
| Jeremy Roenick | 1988 | 2009 | 0 | 513 | 703 | 1216 | 0.892 |
| Vin Damphousse | 1986 | 2004 | 1 | 432 | 773 | 1205 | 0.875 |
| Rod Brind'Amour | 1989 | 2010 | 1 | 452 | 732 | 1184 | 0.798 |
| Sergei Fedorov | 1990 | 2009 | 3 | 483 | 696 | 1179 | 0.945 |
| Joe Nieuwendyk | 1986 | 2007 | 3 | 564 | 562 | 1126 | 0.896 |
| Doug Weight | 1991 | 2011 | 1 | 278 | 755 | 1033 | 0.834 |
Okay, so he didn't win a Stanley Cup or any major awards (unless you consider the Lady Byng trophy a "major" award) but he has a higher points per game average than anyone on this list, and I'm having a hard time separating him from first-ballot HOFer Mats Sundin.
Jeremy Roenick is an interesting case as well. I'm not quite sold on his Hall of Fame candidacy, but there's no denying he was a star. Damphousse, Brind'Amour, and Weight are better suited for the "Hall of Very Good", though Brind'Amour's two-way play might get him in the HHOF one day.
I never really thought of Pierre Turgeon as a bona fide star the way Sundin and Modano and Roenick and Fedorov and Gilmour were stars. (I never thought of Joe Nieuwendyk as a star, either.) And yet his career numbers tell me I should. No wonder I had his cards sorted in two different places!
Can you think of any deserving players who are not in the Hockey Hall of Fame?
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