Eight Is Not Enough

The building to the left is supposed to be a place where the legends of hockey live. There's no denying that there are some hallowed and noteworthy names already lining the halls inside that institution, but it might be time for the Hockey Hall of Fame to peer directly into the mirror and give itself a thorough examination as to what its purpose is. With the announcement of a ninth woman entering the Hall of Fame, the growing gap between the male inductees and the female inductees is becoming hard to ignore.

It's hard to argue with the names who have already been inducted when one looks at the very short list of female players. The eight names include Cammi Granato and Angela James (2010), Geraldine Heaney (2013), Angela Ruggiero (2014), Danielle Goyette (2017), Jayna Hefford (2018), Hayley Wickenheiser (2019), and Kim St-Pierre (2020), and no one will argue against any of those choices when it comes to players who changed the game through their play and the honours they amassed as players.

Do you notice anything about those names, though? All eight of those women are players who learned their craft in North America. There isn't one European player in the list until Riikka Sallinen joins them this year. The first Finnish-born and trained female player will join the Hockey Hall of Fame as its first European woman, and it's so ridiculously overdue that Sallinen should receive more than just a plaque for her efforts.

Sallinen played against both Angela James and Cammi Granato at the first Women's World Championship tournament in 1990 before the IIHF wrapped its clammy hands around the tournament. She was everything to Finnish hockey in the same vein that Grantao was to USA Hockey and James was to Canadian hockey. Perhaps you're not convinced since you don't recall the name, so let's make the case.

Her list of accolades includes being named as the best player at the 1994 tournament, leading the 1997 tournament in scoring, still being the all-time leading scorer among Europeans at both the World Championships and Olympics, earning one silver medal and six bronze medals at World Championships, earning two Olympic bronze medals, being one of two women first named to the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame in 1997 (defender Marianne Ihalainen was the other), being inducted in the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2010 as the fourth woman and first European woman, and is the oldest hockey player to win a medal at the Olympics at age 44 after winning a bronze medal in 2018.

Still not convinced based on her international successes?

Sallinen is also a five-time champion in Finland's Naisten Liiga where she scored 395 points in 135 games. She joined HV71 in the SDHL in 2016, and captained the squad from 2017-19 where she continued to score at an amazing pace - 119 points in 92 games - despite retiring in 2019 at the age of 46. If Finland had an equivalent player to Gordie Howe, Hanna-Riikka Sallinen is that player.

Long overdue? That timeline doesn't even scratch the surface. This woman is a hockey pioneer who should have been inducted alongside Granato and James back in 2010 based on her list of accolades. This is a woman who has been inducted into her own country's Hockey Hall of Fame 25 years ago, and the Hockey Hall of Fame is finally getting around to recognizing her greatness. Not including her in the initial class of women is pretty incredible after reading the paragraphs above, so getting her in this year is an egregious oversight corrected.

Thanks for taking your time, though, Hall of Fame committee. Glad to see you're interested in honouring the game's best players. Excuse my sarcasm.

Every year, there are two spots to induct women into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Every year since 2010, we've seen one or none inducted annually. Something is seriously broken within the walls of the Hockey Hall of Fame if we aren't inducting two women every year from the plethora of women who have played this game and pushed it to what it is today. There simply is no excuse that can be given for this ignorance of the women's game when it is so prominent in today's society.

I don't think I have to make a case for Caroline Ouellette's inclusion into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and she was in her first year of eligibility to be added this year. Her name is somehow not on the inductee list despite her owning six World Championship gold medals, six World Championship silver medals, and is one of five Olympians to win gold medals at four consecutive Olympiads. Those accolades alone are better than nearly all the men whose plaques line the walls of the Hockey Hall of Fame, yet Ouellette's not going in this year despite not even mentioning her accomplishments in the NCAA and CWHL. Maybe next year, I guess?

At what point do we start considering the likes of Julie Chu, Florence Schelling, Shannon Szabados, Kim Martin Hasson, Maria Rooth, Pernilla Winberg, Jennifer Botterill, Liisa-Maria Sneck, Hilda and Nellie Ranscombe, Meghan Duggan, Cassie Campbell-Pascall, Tiia Reima, Jocelyn and Monique Lamoureux, and so many other women who laid the groundwork for women's hockey domestically in their own countries and together on the international stages for everyone who followed? When will the women listed above be inducted if one of the greatest offensive forces in hockey - men's or women's - in Caroline Ouellette can't be elected to the Hall in her first year of eligibility?

We've constantly heard women's hockey advocates using the line "If you can see it, you can be it"or some variation on that statement. If you took a young girl to the Hockey Hall of Fame right now, there isn't much backing to that statement when it comes to seeing who the best women's hockey players of all-time are. Eight plaques are in the Hall of Fame for women out of the 289 plaques that are displayed - 2.8% of the total players represented despite there being decades of women's hockey from which to draw.

Let me be very clear: the Hockey Hall of Fame is not and has never been the NHL Hall of Fame. Yes, there is a large number of NHL players who are in the Hockey Hall of Fame, but that's mostly because the Hall of Fame committee has been made up of former NHL players and executives and its original founding had the NHL's backing. This has led to the problem of having the Hockey Hall of Fame heavily favouring NHL players simply because the NHL promoted it, so perhaps its time to start having a more global, diverse committee choose players than the current NHL-centric committee.

If you're still not convinced that the Hockey Hall of Fame does a lousy job in promoting the game on a global basis, let's not forget that European players weren't part of the Hall of Fame until 1996 when Swedish legend Borje Salming was finally inducted. Of course, we had to wait until 2010 when the first women's hockey players were inducted, so there evidence is pretty damning when one considers how much hockey history has been written outside of North American borders.

History lessons aside, the Hockey Hall of Fame should be obligated to make up for lost time in inducting two women per year in every year until the criteria for induction is exhausted. Some will want to redefine the criteria when it comes to certain players being included, but this is the same argument the men's side of the Hall has: what are the requirements needed?

I'm not here to define those requirements. If Daniel Alfredsson, Daniel Sedin, Henrik Sedin, and Roberto Luongo have done enough to warrant inclusion into the Hockey Hall of Fame, so be it. I'd argue there are still dozens of European players who should be in the Hockey Hall of Fame alongside those four and the other 289 members of the Hall of Fame, but I'm only concerned about having the women's hockey world represented by a greater percentage than 2.8% of the Hall's inductees.

If the Hockey Hall of Fame ever wants to claim that it's the best place to see all of hockey's legends in one place, it needs to do a better job at representing the game globally for both men and women. It can start correcting the problem by using those two spots for inductees annually until further notice.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!