Let's Try to Guess the Next Dallas Stars Player to Get into the Hockey Hall of Fame

Well, aside from the obvious one

The Golden Camouflage Brett

When I saw that Ed Belfour and Richard Matvichuk joined the DLLS Dallas Stars show on Tuesday, I couldn’t help thinking, once again, how good Stars fans have it these days.

In just a couple of years since Saad Yousuf was moved off the full-time Stars beat, we have gone from having zero independent full-time Stars beat reporters to getting to watch a late-June podcast with three former members of the 1999 Stanley Cup team shooting the breeze. That’s a lot of deserved progress for a market with a very good hockey team.

But the second thing I thought about, when Hockey Hall of Famer Ed Belfour talked about playing with Alexander Mogilny (who was finally selected to enter the HHOF himself), was this: who’s next? By which I mean, who will be the next Dallas Star to join the Hockey Hall of Fame?

As a reminder, here are the current Dallas Stars alumni in the HHOF (that is, people who played an NHL game as a Dallas Star): Mike Modano, Sergei Zubov, Neil Broten, Guy Carbonneau, Pierre Turgeon, Ed Belfour, Brett Hull, Joe Nieuwendyk, Sergei Makarov, and Eric Lindros.

The Hockey Hall of Fame can be a bit tough to predict, given the draconian way it operates, and I suppose we could always get something like a Jere Lehtinen induction at some point. Carbonneau and Turgeon’s selections in recent years make a lot of things seem likely that previously didn’t, but Lehtinen’s candidacy has been covered elsewhere, so I’ll not re-tread that ground for now.

For our purposes today, we’re going to look past the old guard to see if we can answer this question: Who is the next Dallas Stars player who is going to enter the Hall of Fame?

Let’s look at three categories of player to see if we can arrive at a clear answer: Former NHL players, active former Stars players, and current Stars players.

(And yes, I am going to forget someone totally obvious, and you should absolutely destroy me for it. Oh man, you got me so good, bazinga and such.)

Former NHL Players

Five Hundred People Shouting At Once: Jaromír Jágr! Next question?

Okay, wait, no, I meant besides ageless Czech 53-year-olds following in the footsteps of Gordie Howe. Obviously I meant that. Come on, I thought that was clear.

With respect to Jágr and his 34 games with the Stars, let’s try again, because this dude may genuinely never retire. But yes, when he does, he will be the most automatic Hall of Famer you can imagine. He breaks every category (including this one, which I had to change from “retired players” to “former NHL players” just because I knew one of you would get all Minkus-y about it).

As for candidates more recently in the NHL, Jason Spezza just became eligible for selection this year, as did a host of your favorite former Stars like Mike Smith, Trevor Daley, and Roman Polák. Spezza probably has the best chance of anyone in this year’s class of former Stars players, but I don’t see it as being a very substantial one, given his lack of a Stanley Cup or individual awards. He didn’t hit 400 goals or 1,000 points either, so this year’s Stars class probably didn’t add to our list.

How about prior years, though?

Ray Whitney is a 1,000-point guy who finished his wonderful career in Dallas, and he did get a ring with Carolina in 2005-06. The following year (‘06-07) was the only one in which he hit 80 points or 30 goals, however. He had a fantastic career that is probably still a fair bit underappreciated, but he probably hasn’t separated himself from the pack enough to grab one of the four available player spots in the HHOF in any given year.

Personally, I think Marty Turco also doesn’t get nearly enough love, both for his setting the modern record in 2002-03 with an insane 1.72 GAA¹, as well as inventing the Turco Grip and revolutionizing stickhandling for NHL goaltenders. Yes, players like Martin Brodeur were also exceptionally talented puckhandlers, but Turco changed the entire puckhandling landscape for every goalie who came after him, and his grip is now ubiquitous across the hockey world. (Read Sean’s book about it, already.) Still, if Turco hasn’t made it in by now, he’s probably not going to do so any time soon. His career probably wasn’t quite long enough either, with only ten seasons in Dallas before a backup role in Chicago and a final cameo in Boston.

Back to less obvious candidates for a moment, though: if we’re talking about players who played a full season for Dallas who might get into the Hall of Fame, I think the answer could be Sergei Gonchar, quite possibly. But Gonchar only played 79 games with Dallas, and he was traded for Travis Moen early in his second season, in large part to make room for John Klingberg. So, Gonchar is kind of in Jágr territory for our purposes, though without the lock on his selection.

With that said, is Gonchar the potential answer to our potential trivia question? Yes, but it’s not really in the spirit of our quest to find the next Dallas Stars Hall of Famer, which is a semantic distiction I’ve just now decided to reinforce, arbitrarily. It’s called journalism, folks.

Brad Richards is another interesting candidate, particularly if he gets some quiet support from the HHOF cabal. He received the Conn Smythe Trophy in Tampa Bay’s 2004 championship run, and he also got the Lady Byng that summer, just for good measure. Richards also hit 91 points twice, in two different seasons, on two very different teams. Putting up that many points on that 2010-11 Dallas Stars team deserves a recongition of some kind, certainly.

Still, Richards only had one All-Star appearance in his career (yes, in 2011), and no end-of-season All-Star selections. He did add another Cup ring with the Blackhawks in 2015, but without hitting either 1,000 career points or even 300 goals, he probably has a steep hill to climb. With that said, I give you full permission to trot out Brad Richards’s stats (or Spezza’s) the minute people start stumping for Ryan Getzlaf next year. I have a very hard time putting Getzlaf on a more deserving tier than either of those other players unless you decide to put far more stock in Getzlaf’s international success, but that would basically be giving Getzlaf credit for playing on absolutely loaded Canadian teams in 2010 and 2014 compared to just the very good one Richards joined in 2006.

Two Former Stars Still in the NHL, and One Other Dude

It is with great reluctance that I now inform you that we must talk about Corey Perry, who may end up getting his own wing of the HHOF built purely to tell the story of his repeated runner-up finishes in the playoffs over the last half-dozen years.

Perry spent a full season with Dallas as well as what must have felt like a lifetime in the Edmonton bubble. But he’s in a more important category: Being Corey Perry. His overtime goal against Tampa Bay in 2020 might have been a very cool memory, but Stars fans seem to have a whole bunch of other associations with Perry from his time in Anaheim.

Also, let’s just get ahead of the debate right now: is Perry even a Hall of Famer? He seems like a pretty solid candidate, with a Hart Trophy (which corresponds pretty closely to HHOF selection) and a Rocket Richard earned by his 50-goal outburst in 2010-11.

Perry was also a First Team All-Star twice, as well as a four-time selection for the All-Star Game. He’s also got 448 goals, which is…not as many as I would have expected across his 1392 NHL games, actually. In fact, he somehow hasn’t yet hit 1,000 points despite playing for 20 years now.

In fact, Perry hasn’t even hit 20 goals in a season since…can you guess?

That’s right: since 2015-16. It’s been a decade since Corey Perry was able to do what Evgenii Dadonov did just this year, so you tell me who the real Hall of Fame candidate is, folks.

Perry, like Getzlaf, has the Team Canada international acclaim to fall back on, and that, combined with his outrageous peak in Anaheim, might be enough for him to get the call when the field thins out after he retires (if he ever does). But man, Perry’s numbers really did take a permanent step back once he hit 30 years old. Perhaps that could be seen as a testament to his excellence in a sense, as he’s morphed into a Nasty Dave Andreychuk sort of player in the second half of his career—albeit one who can’t hit 20 goals anymore, whereas Andreychuk was piling up 20-goal seasons in the dead puck era right into the 2004 NHL lockout.

Also, here’s a fun fact: Perry never hit 100 points in a season, as he tended to be the finisher to Getzlaf’s setup work, eschewing assists for those sweet, sweet goals. Meanwhile, I am being told that Jason Robertson scored 109 points two years ago, which means Dadonov and Robertson are clearly more deserving Hall of Fame candidates than Perry, according to the results of the Dallas Stars Fan Poll I keep meaning to run.

But we’ve officially spent too much time talking about Anaheim Ducks, so let’s talk about a former Shark who should be in the former NHLers category above, but I wanted to put him down here just to fake you all out, or because some of you are still holding out hope for his return, or, because I changed the categories later on and didn’t want to re-order all the paragraphs, and also this category seems kind of surprisingly small, actually. One of those.

Joe Pavelski scored more career goals and points than Corey Perry has compiled, and Pavelski did so in 60 fewer games played. Both players have four All-Star Games to their names, so, right off the bat, we can add Pavelski to the above fan poll, which I am told he has already won.

Pavelski’s career is remarkable both for how it started and how it ended. The seventh-round draft pick put up 14 seasons of 20 goals or more, finishing his career with four straight seasons with 25+. He also had his career-best total of 81 points in 2021-22, at 37 years old. I believe “like fine wine” is the phrase they use.

Perhaps most importantly, thought: Joe Pavelski’s Hockey Reference nicknames include Little Joe, Joe Exotic, The Big Pavelski, Captain America, and…Pokey. (Note to self: absolutely remember to research “Pokey.”)

Generally speaking, the Hall of Fame goes more for players with peaks like Perry than careers like Pavelski, and when you consider that Pavelski never did win a Cup, it becomes clearer that Pavelski’s Hall of Fame selection might need to be more of the Carbonneau/Turgeon variety, which is to say an outlier. Still, Pavelski’s leadership qualities and immense respect around the league could well see him gather quiet support. And again, he put up 476 goals and over 1,000 points in 1,332 NHL games.

He was extremely dependable, and he still commands a ton of respect, and he never fell off the way players like Perry and Spezza did. Would the Hall of Fame decide to press the “token USA player” button in a couple of years and bring him aboard? Ken Campbell doesn’t think Pavelski quite merits that honor, but he does make a good case for why Pavelski is at least close to it.

Ryan Suter is another former Stars player, you may have heard. Suter does belong in this category, as he is still considering playing another year if the fit is right, as of a few days ago. Suter had one First Team All-Star selection and three All-Star Game appearances, and three top-five Norris Trophy selections. He’s also played over 1,500 NHL games, but he has a -30 in 138 playoff games.

Suter was also bought out twice in the last four years, and his exit from Minnesota didn’t exactly sound like a pleasant one. Suter isn’t quite a universally beloved figure, in other words, so it might depend even more than usual on who the voters are when his candidacy comes up.

Here’s an interesting question: would Suter be an automatic Hall of Famer if he hadn’t finished 2nd to P.K. Subban for the Norris Trophy in 2013? I’m sure Suter doesn’t think about that every single time he watches ESPN during the playoffs.

Okay, let’s get to the final category for today.

Current Dallas Stars

Jamie Benn, Matt Duchene, and Tyler Seguin are the obvious names to start with, as they currently project to be the three oldest players on the team next year, depending on how free agency shakes out.

First, the basics.

Benn: 399 goals and 956 points in 1,192 games.
Duchene: 371 goals and 891 points in 1,138 games.
Seguin: 360 goals and 809 points in 989 games.

You can draw some distinctions between any two players in this set. Seguin has won a Cup. Jamie Benn has an Art Ross Trophy. Matt Duchene has far more international medals.

Still, out of those three, presuming current trends hold, I think Jamie Benn is the most likely to get serious Hall of Fame consideration (assuming he finally gets that 400th goal next season), especially if he spends the rest of his career Dallas. Benn has been extraordinarily durable in his NHL career, and he only broke his 371 consecutive games-played streak this season because he became a new father. He’s also been one of the longest-serving captains in the NHL, and he’s continued to inspire fear in his opponents even as his offensive game has slowed down—a trait that plays very well when it comes time to establish a narrative around a player’s entire body of work, as the HHOF tends to do.

With that said, Seguin or Duchene could still rattle off some Pavelski-like seasons in their thirties, but without a Dallas Stanley Cup in the near future, a Hall of Fame selection seems like something we can’t really count on convincingly here, even for Benn.

Mikko Rantanen, on the other hand, looks like the best bet of anyone on the roster to get a blue HHOF blazer one day. At 28 years old, Rantanen already has a championship, along with 705 points in 652 games, and a Second Team All-Star selection. He’s also topped 100 points in a season twice, and 30 or more goals in a season six times, including campaigns with 55 and 42 goals—the same years that wound up being his final two in Colorado.

He’s had an oustanding start to his career, even better than Perry’s absolute peak in Anaheim. For Rantanen, however, his eventual enshrinement will be about two things: proving his can keep those numbers up (or something close to them) away from Nathan MacKinnon, and health. He’s already proven he’s one of the best players in the league; now he’ll have a $12 million contract and a three-team trade saga illuminating the next phase of his career.

If he can continue to shine and pile up numbers even in the neighborhood of the standard he’s set thus far, he looks every bit like a player who deserves the honor. But at 28 years old, there are still a few chapters that haven’t even begun to be written. Certainly the Stars will hope the next eight years only reinforce the narrative established in his first ten, but that’s still a question right now, even if the Stars made a $96 million bet on the answer.

Beyond that, you get into players whose careers are still so unclear that even talking about their potential HHOF candidacy feels ludicrous. But whatever, let’s write some stuff that will look silly in five years. Hockey’s over, for now.

The next couple of forwards you’d look at are players like Jason Robertson and Wyatt Johnston. Robertson is the only one of the three to hit even 80 points so far, let alone 109. And yet, he seems the most likely of those three not to be here in two years, which is kind of nuts.

I think Robertson would need to hit 90 points a few more times, at the very least, to wind up in that HHOF conversation ten years from now. He’s sneaky-good at defense, but when your coach has no problem ribbing you in the media for your skating deficiencies, you probably are going to need some overcompensation in other areas. And for Robertson, that other area will have to be scoring.

Johnston has put together three outstanding seasons in an exceptionally young career, but projecting anything further than that seems like a fool’s errand. Johnston could turn out to be a really special player, because he already is. But after just three years and one somewhat disappointing (by his standards) playoff run, it’s best not to try to project the next decade or two.

Hintz has gotten some Selke votes, but he’s yet to really establish himself as a player on that Mikko Rantanen sort of tier, so that’s why I’m only just now mentioning him. Hintz and Rantanen are the same age (yep) and nationality, so you can bet that the comparison is going to be made more than a few times over the next few years (as well as the comparison between MacKinnon and Hintz any time Rantanen’s scoring slows down).

On defense, Miro Heiskanen seemed like the easiest answer to this question as recently as two years ago, when he finished 7th in the Norris Trophy voting. But now? Well, I think it depends entirely on whether Heiskanen can win at least one Norris in the next few years of his prime. If he can do that, maybe his body of work can draw more of the respect it deserves—particularly his exceptional defensive positioning and stickwork. Heiskanen will probably need to get a few more seasons with point totals in the sixties at some point to do that, too. He also probably needs not to miss the next big international tournament for Team Finland (by which I mean stay away from Mark Stone).

Heiskanen’s winning a Norris could be tough with Thomas Harley on the team, given how outstanding Harley has been on the power play. Harley also just finished seventh in the Norris voting himself, so the two teammates might find themselves in a situation where they either elevate each other’s game or wind up splitting the perceived vote a little bit. Of course, if that means the team keeps going deep in the playoffs, both players will be thrilled about it. Still, we’ve only seen both players healthy together for one full season, and they combined² for over 100 points that year. If the Stars can keep that up and win a Cup in the process, Harley’s Team Canada work on the international stage could well serve to bolster a potential HHOF resume in another decade, but again, we’re ridiculous far out from that time. For all we know, we’ll all be using clams for currency and wearing hamburgers on our feet by then. Ten years is a long time.

Finally, the goalie. Jake Oettinger is the team’s franchise goalie, but with netminders and the HHOF, there are two main things they tend to look at: Vezina Trophies and Stanley Cups. Until he has one or both of those things to his name, projecting things this far in advance is just silly. And frankly, I do not find such buffoonery amusing.

1. I’ve whinged about this before, but Turco really shouldn’t have been dethroned by Miikka Kiprusoff’s 1.69 number in 2003-04, given that Kiprusoff played just 38 games that season on a three-headed Calgary goalie monster, while Turco played 55 games in 2002-03, when he put up a 1.72—and didn’t even win the Vezina. No one should be considered to hold any kind of serious NHL record if they don’t play at least half their team’s games, right?

2. Have the Stars researched any sort of brainwashing to make one of these players a right-shot defenseman, by the way? Related question: Has medical science failed us in this regard? Answer: Absolutely.