tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
4 players from a team that was a 3 time cup winner and 15+ year perennial contender making the HOF is not anything crazy.
But Elias was not a 3 time Cup winner. He didn’t play in the NHL full time until 1998, and was part of a very different cohort of players than the one which won the Cup in 1995.
Shall we place the same cutoff on the hawks?
I’m speaking specifically to this notion that he had to sacrifice offense to excel defensivemy. We’re talking about a guy who was not in fact a Selke contender in his own right, who played in front of Brodeur/Stevens/Niedermayer, in a famously disciplined structure, and played wing for the most relevant period of success. The claim is that he sacrificed a big chunk of offense in order to carry the team defensively, but that claim doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. There were plenty of other guys in the league who could have won Cups while posting better numbers with that Devils core. Those guys are by and large the ones who get into the HHOF.
It’s a bit like talking about offense on the 80s Oilers. Once you get down the roster past Gretzky/Coffey/Kurri/Messier, understanding the way that team played and the norms of the time period, it’s no disrespect to Glenn Anderson and his ~500 goals to say he probably wasn’t an HOF’er just because he was “one of the best offensive players on a dynasty”.
With Elias, the offensive output simply wasn’t at the standard HHOF level. Nobody’s denying he was also a good defender, but let’s be real… he wasn’t in the Gainey/Carbonneau realm of guys who make the HHOF without offensive numbers anywhere close to the usual bar.
He was a good two-way player who happened to play on a team with multiple HOF’ers, which explains the team success. That’s plenty of substance for an honorable reputation in the game. It’s no disrespect to say he falls short of HHOF induction.