HHOF Inductees

With hockey in the off season, most of the news for fans have come in the form of who the new draft picks are various trades that have occurred, but yesterday for four ex-hockey players they received the best calls of their careers yesterday. Joe Sakic, Adam Oates, Pavel Bure and Mats Sudin all received a phone call yesterday from the The Hockey Hall of Fame committee that they all will be inducted next November in Toronto.

If you follow the Colorado Avalanche on twitter, you probably heard the most about Sakic’s induction yesterday as the team’s twitter account was retweeting congratulations to the former player. The Avs were really proud of Sakic since he played with the franchise his entire playing career and is now an executive within the organization.

Sakic retired in the 2008-2009 season along with Sudin, each who had to wait three years before even being considered for induction to the Hall of Fame. Since both of them are going to be inducted later this year, it is really impressive that they were inducted this early in their post-hockey playing career. The other two inductees have not been out of the league for too much longer either. Bure retired in 2003 and Oates in 2004.

Some of the other former players who were in the running for being inducted where NHL’s VP of Player Safety, Brendan Shanahan, Jeremy Roenick, Eric Lindros, and Curtis Joseph among others. There is always the possibility that these players will be inducted next year.

I am a recent graduate of West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where I hold a BA in English with a minor in creative writing. My career aspirations lie mostly in novel writing, but I also have an interest in sports journalism. I wrote soccer and hockey articles for my University's student newspaper and I currently write for two other sports blogs in addition to Ballhyped. I am the NHL beat writer for Ballhyped, and pretty much live and breathe for the sport of ice hockey.