Should Tomas Holmstrom Make The Hall of Fame

      Should Tomas Holmstrom be elected to the Hall of Fame when he becomes eligible in 2016?  I believe he should, he was a key piece of four Detroit Red Wings Stanley Cup Championship teams.  There has never been another player in NHL history that was better at screening goalies and causing havoc in front of the net.  Goalies and defensemen hated to see him skating to the net to take up a position just outside the crease and attempt to re-direct a shot from the point into the net.  Holmstrom was hacked, whacked, crosschecked and tripped, he had goalies ram their sticks into his crotch and defensemen try to keep him on the ice after being knocked down.  The area in front of the crease became known as "his office."  He wasn’t the fastest skater and didn’t have the hardest shot but he had the best hand/eye coordination in league history.  There wasn’t a better player at knocking a puck out of the air or tipping it on the ice.  Few players absorbed as much punishment in the quest to score a goal as Homer did.  He earned the nickname of Demolition Man for both the havoc he caused and the punishment he took.  In his 15 seasons with the Red Wings, he amassed 243 goals and 287 assists for 530 points in 1026 games.    He scored 20 or more goals five times and had at least 50 points twice.  Holmstrom had 97 points in 180 playoff games and won Stanley Cups in 1997, 1998, 2002 & 2008.  He is sixth in games played, fourth in playoff games played and thirteenth in points all-time for the Red Wings.  Is this an impressive enough resume to warrant election into the Hall of Fame?  I believe that it is, especially when the stats of some of the other Honored Members are compared to his. 

       There are at least ten Members with stats comparable to Holmstrom, I don’t see how the hockey writers can put these guys in and not elect Holmstrom when he becomes eligible.  Bill Mosienko, Bill Cook, brothers Charlie, Roy and Lionel Conacher, Bryan Hextall, Busher Jackson, Toe Blake, Teeder Kennedy and Dick Duff, are all players in the Hall of Fame with stats close to Homer's.  Mosienko who played most of his career with Chicago and racked up 258 goals and 282 assists for 540 points.  Cook had 229 goals 138 assists for 367 points mostly for the New York Rangers.  Charlie Conacher scored 225 goals, 173 assists for 398 points for the Maple Leafs.  His brothers Roy and Lionel who played for Boston/Chicago & the New York Americans/Montreal Moroons respectively, garnered 226 goals, 200 assists for 426 points while Lionel had 80 goals 105 assists for 185 points.  Hextall had 187 goals, 175 assists and 362 points for the Rangers.  Jackson racked up 241 goals, 234 assists for 475 points playing for Toronto and Boston.  The great Toe Blake earned 235 goals, 292 assists for 527 points for the Canadiens, while Kennedy had 231 goals, 239 assists for 560 points playing for the Leafs and Duff had 283 goals, 289 assists for 572 points for Montreal and Toronto.  I'm sure nobody would say that any of these players don't deserve to be in the Hall, so what would be the knock on Holmstrom? 

      You can't say it is because of his longevity, because only five other Red Wings have played more games.  It can't be because of a lack of championships, because he has four Cups.  Holmstrom was not the prototypical sniper but that wasn't his game.  His job was to irritate and annoy goalies and defensemen, get tip-ins and deflections and clean up garbage around the net and I think he is the best there has ever been at that.  Patrick Roy and Ron Hextall hated Holmstrom and received more than one penalty for slashing or roughing and even if they weren't called, they were thinking more about him than the game.  It is impossible to quantify how many goals he had a hand in beyond those he was given credit for.  How many times were goals scored because the goalie was thinking about Holmstrom or because Homer was blocking his vision?  We can never know but four Stanley Cups says quite a few.  Tomas Holmstrom also changed the game, before he came into the league, a player screening goalies happened but wasn't a designed play.  Homer and Scotty Bowman, his coach when he came into the league, started putting him in front of the goalie, using his big body to shield the puck from view.  It started on the power play but it was so successful that Bowman started having him do it all the time.  Before long, every team had a guy who had the job to screen goalies.  If that isn't enough to get into the Hall of Fame, I don't know what is.