The St. Louis Blues are in a limbo phase where there might not be a ton of names on the Hall of Fame list. That doesn’t mean any Blues won’t be considered.
The NHL just released the list of Hall of Fame players that will be inducted as part of the 2020 HOF class, whenever that happens. Of course, there were no members of the St. Louis Blues included.
There is no surprise there. The Blues are in somewhat of a limbo phase where they are not likely to have someone inducted into the Hall anytime soon.
With that in mind, it got us wondering who might be the next person that wore the Blue Note to end up in the Hall of Fame. There are some options, but only a couple that seem actually likely.
Oddly enough, or perhaps just coincidentally, ESPN just did a similar list of their own that happened to come up with the same names. You can check theirs out here.
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As pointed out in the ESPN piece, Keith Tkachuk seems like the most likely player from the Blues to go into the Hall of Fame next. When next will be is anyone’s guess.
The Hockey Hall of Fame only elects four players into its membership each season. Every year you have a long list of players that fans feel got snubbed.
There is a growing fan base upset with the exclusion of Alexander Mogilny. You’ll always have names you think should get in that just aren’t getting that steam behind their name behind the scenes.
As pointed out in the article by Die by the Blade, rightly or wrongly, nationality does play a part to an extent. Out of 289 members of the Hall, only 14 are American and only nine are Russian or from the former Soviet Union.
That’s a pretty small percentage. That makes it a little less likely that a member of the Blues goes in soon.
Tkachuk is American. The other member of the Blues that seems the most likely, down the road, is Russian Vladimir Tarasenko.
We forget how good Tkachuk was during an era when guys did not score a ton, especially playing more of a power forward role as opposed to looking for space on the perimeter. In just over 1200 career games, he had 538 goals.
208 were scored in a Blues uniform. He had back-to-back 50 goal seasons with Winnipeg and Phoenix.
Tkachuk was equal opportunity offense, as he set up almost as many goals as he scored. He was clutch with 72 career game-winning goals as well.
That’s more goals and more points than Mogilny, who is having a compelling case made for him by Sabres fans. Granted, Mogilny played over 200 games fewer, but the cases are somewhat similar.
For his part, Tarasenko is not likely worried about a Hall of Fame induction anytime soon, if at all. He strikes you as the type of player that would be humbled, but has no aspirations of such things.
Nevertheless, if he continues on his current pace and stays healthy, there is no reason he might not be inducted eventually. At age 28, Tarasenko already has 214 goals in 507 career games.
If he kept up that same pace, he would have more than 500 goals by the time he got to the same number of games played as Tkachuk. Health will be a key factor as Tarasenko would have had plenty more than 214 goals had he played more than a handful of games in 2019-20.
Tarasenko was averaging more than 30 goals per season as it was. The only thing bringing down his totals was a couple shorter campaigns in his first two seasons and then injury this past season.
The talent is there to be a 600-goal scorer, which should be a lock for Hall of Fame. Health and how long he plays the game will determine that.
Outside of those two, the only realistic current candidate might be Alex Pietrangelo. Honestly, that boils down to the voters more than anything.
With forwards, you can strip things down to the numbers and then go with a gut feeling after that. With defenders, it’s not quite as easy since an offensive defenseman is very different than a defensive defenseman.
They’ll put up completely different numbers, but be just as instrumental to their team’s success. Personally, I could see Petro being a Hall of Fame player, but I could easily see him get left out of the mix too.
Sadly, that is true of all the names mentioned here.
The interesting thing will be fans’ reactions to who goes in vs. who does not in the future. We are getting into a time frame where lots of names are players we saw as adults instead of kids, so we tend to wonder if they truly deserve to be inducted.
I won’t lie and say I did not think Marian Hossa‘s selection seemed a bit odd, but the numbers are there. He’s just part of that group where you didn’t idolize them, so it seems more of a stretch.
So, what Blues do you think might go into the Hall of Fame next? Let us know.