elias is an easy hall of famer for me. i mean, if it was my hall then no, but my bar is way way higher than what the actual hall of fame’s is.
people will point to the extra 100-odd career pts, or more seasons above an X pts threshold or within pt/game range, but i really don’t think there’s any daylight between elias and hossa or alfredsson, and in fact i don’t know that i wouldn’t have elias as the best player among them. in a hall where, say, michel goulet was an uncontroversial hall of famer, or steve shutt, bill barber, etc when they were inducted, objectively there should be absolutely nothing keeping elias out.
that said, perception works against him. part of this is his best offensive seasons were in some of the lowest scoring ever, and he had some badly timed injuries and his 2000 holdout. he also had a deep slump during his peak where if he had been consistent (like alfredsson and hossa were, tbf) i don’t think anybody would be looking back and asking, hey wait a minute was patrik elias actually ever elite? and to be fair that was a bad scoring slump: two full regular seasons, 2002 and 2003, one first round loss in 2002 where he was a pt/game and led the series in scoring but scored zero ES pts in a series decided by four one-goal losses, and three rounds of the 2003 cup run where he had only six pts before pulling it together to lead the finals in scoring) but i think he does make up for that it over the course of his career.
i’m not one for woulda, coulda, shouldas, so i’m not pretending here that he didn’t have that long slump in his peak, didn’t lose a year and a half to the lockout and hep C, and didn’t play too many years on defensive devils teams. but i will say that perception of how good elias was when he was playing at an elite level would have been much more apparent without the other mitigating factors that led to him being underrated.
and no, he wasn’t remotely close to a selke-level guy, although his intangible was as a rare swiss-army knife star who could play any forward position and any style you needed while always being a plus player on his own side of the puck.