The Hockey Hall of Fame announces the Class of 2024 on Tuesday. Which players stand out from all those eligible, and what's the procedure to decide on the inductees?
Monday night in Florida, a new group of Stanley Cup champions will be crowned.
Then, on Tuesday in Toronto, Hockey Hall of Fame chairman Lanny McDonald will announce the names of the Hall’s latest inductees in the Class of 2024.
The selection process carries an air of mystery. So before we start speculating on who could get in this year, let’s review the details.
The Hall of Fame has an 18-member selection committee, currently headed up by 2001 inductee Mike Gartner. You can see who’s on the committee here.
The list of nominees and the voting results are held under lock and key. But it’s helpful to understand the nomination and election procedure.
Each year, each member of the selection committee is allowed to nominate up to three people in total for selection, but only one in each of the Hall’s three categories: player, builder and referee/linesman.
With only one player nominee slot each year, committee members must choose between nominating a male or a female player.
Nominations must be submitted by April 15. Then, voting is conducted by secret ballot, with a run-off format.
A nominee must appear on a minimum of 75 percent of the ballots to be elected — at least 14 of 18. That’s a very high bar. Slots will be left open if not enough nominees clear that bar.
Each year, the committee can select a maximum of four male players, two female players and two builders. An inductee in the referee/linesman category can only be selected if fewer than two builders are elected.
Got it? Good.
2024 Eligible Candidates
We'll focus strictly on players in this article.
The Hockey Hall of Fame also provides some handy — but not exhaustive — lists of players who are eligible for induction.
The first list includes first-time eligible players who suited up for more than 600 NHL games. The Hall provides the players’ NHL stat lines and lists major awards.
In 2024's skaters, three names stand out from the rest: Pavel Datsyuk, Patrick Marleau and Shea Weber.
Datsyuk, the Magic Man, is a two-time Stanley Cup champion with the Detroit Red Wings and a member of the IIHF’s Triple Gold Club, with gold medals from the 2018 Olympics and the 2012 World Championship. He also won the KHL’s Gagarin Cup and, individually, is a three-time Selke Trophy winner and four-time Lady Byng winner.
Datsyuk is regarded by many as one of the greatest players of his generation and would generally be expected to be a slam-dunk first-ballot Hall of Famer.
But what about the Russian factor? Russia and Belarus remain banned from IIHF competition due to the invasion of Ukraine. Going back even further, the committee — which does include Russian-born Hall of Famer Igor Larionov — hasn’t inducted a Russian player since Sergei Zubov got the call in 2019.
There has long been a feeling that Alexander Mogilny has long been snubbed by the Hall, and the reasons aren't clear.
In addition to being one of the greatest players of his era and also a Triple Gold Club member, Mogilny made hockey history in 1989 as the first player ever to defect from the then-Soviet Union.
If the committee members have been passing on Russian players in recent years due to world events, could Datsyuk’s sparkling credentials also possibly trigger a change of heart regarding Mogilny’s status?
The cases for Marleau and Weber are not as strong as Datsyuk. Both players won two Olympic golds and one World Championship with Team Canada. And while both reached the Stanley Cup final once in their career, neither captured the trophy.
Marleau’s all-time NHL games-played record could be a powerful motivator to the voters, though. And while Weber never quite captured the Norris Trophy, he was a three-time finalist who finished second by a single-digit voting margin in back-to-back years, falling just short of Nicklas Lidstrom in 2011 and Erik Karlsson in 2012.
In 2023, the Hall did a catch-up on goalies, inducting first-time eligible Henrik Lundqvist along with older netminders Tom Barrasso and Mike Vernon.
This year’s class of first-ballot goalies includes a pair of Vezina Trophy winners who have already had their numbers retired by the teams that drafted them: Pekka Rinne and Ryan Miller. But both are missing that major championship on their resumes.
What About the Women?
As mentioned earlier, the Hall can induct a maximum of two female players each year. That has only happened once, when Cammi Granato and Angela James were the first women honored in 2010.
Only eight more women have been named to the Hall since then, bringing the grand total to 10.
Now that the PWHL has made women’s pro hockey a reality, the sport is growing faster than ever. The trailblazers who got the game to this place deserve to be recognized.
At a glance, the most egregious omission from the current list of honorees is Jennifer Botterill — a three-time Olympic gold medallist and five-time world champion. She was also a two-time Patty Kazmaier Award winner at Harvard, where she finished with a jaw-dropping 340 points in 113 games over four years — averaging better than three points a game.
On the other side of the border, four-time Olympian and gold medallist Jenny Potter also won an NCAA championship with the University of Minnesota-Duluth and was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2020. Meghan Duggan is a gold medallist and three-time Olympian who helped lead the U.S. women’s team’s boycott for equal pay ahead of the 2017 World Championship.
And much like Daniel and Henrik Sedin, the only appropriate way for the Lamoureux twins Monique and Jocelyn to be inducted would be together — especially since they both played pivotal roles in the Americans’ 2018 Olympic win in Pyeongchang.
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