On the lead up to the Hockey Hall of Fame’s announcement of the 2023 Class on Wednesday, June 21, we’ll be profiling eight hopeful candidates. Each player profile will help answer a hard-hitting question about the HHOF and what membership to the game’s most exclusive honor should look like.

Imagine a hockey league where the biggest stars still have part-time jobs. It’s a regional league featuring common ownership among teams. Nearly every player is from the same country. No international footprint. The championship gets passed back and forth by the same few teams. When it finally adds more franchises, things go off the rails. Upstart rival leagues. Money issues. A product quickly diluted.

We’re talking, of course, about the NHL’s Original Six — hockey’s golden age. Richard. Howe. Beliveau. Orr. Those guys. What did you think we were talking about?

Incredibly, there are 178 male players elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame that played primarily before 1967. These pioneering legends travelled by train and played before sticks had curves or goalies wore masks. Like men’s hockey then, women’s hockey now is ironing out its identity in a competitive sports landscape. Yet, there are so many founding fathers inducted, you could ice 30 lineups.

There are nine women in the Hall of Fame.

With that absurd figure in mind, we’re tackling the question as to why the HHOF has been so glacially slow to elect world-class female players. Our profile will follow decorated Canadian scoring sensation turned brilliant NHL broadcaster, Jennifer Botterill. While we aren’t able to use NHL era-calibrated statistical tools here, the series’ format will be remain intact in evaluating her case.

The Narratives 🎙️

Big Proponent: “The all-time NCAA top scorer, three-time Olympic gold medalist, and two-time World Championship MVP, Botterill dominated so completely at every level that her HHOF wait is inexcusable.”
Big Opponent: “With women’s hockey in its infancy from a historical perspective, the HHOF should continue to gradually elect only its biggest stars while it irons out a standard for greatness.”

The Stats 💻

Career (1997-2011): 14 seasons — Team Canada, Harvard (NCAA), Toronto/Mississauga (NWHL/CWHL)

The High Noon Card 🕛

High Noon rankings are the equivalent of the world golf or tennis rankings — only for hockey. A player’s High Noon answers the question: “Where did they rank at their best at their position?”

While the NHL version of High Noon is a 3-year rolling average based on adjusted point shares, we’re improvising. We’re using points-per-game at each season’s signature international event to illustrate Botterill’s standing. A prodigious talent, she debuted on the Canadian national team at age 18. The Ottawa-born sniper was the youngest member of the inaugural Nagano Olympic team in 1998.

That autumn, she would begin her Earth-scorching four-year run at Harvard. Her prolific scoring pace equates to 247 points per NHL season. That’s not a typo. Her feats there are legendary, including an 80-game point streak, two Patty Kazmaier Awards as the best player in college hockey, and the most career points on record. While attending Harvard, her stock would continue to rise on the global stage, becoming an increasingly impactful cog in Team Canada’s juggernaut.

By age 22, Botterill was the #4 forward in hockey, scoring eight times in five games as MVP of the ’02 World Championship. Her High Noon arrived at the ’04 World Championship, bagging 11 points in five games, snagging a second tournament MVP. She would remain among the sport’s best forwards for nearly a decade. While Canada and their American arch-rivals have traded international crowns for over 30 years, Peak Botterill’s teams dramatically tilted the balance. From 1999 to 2007, inclusive of all IIHF World Championships, Olympics, and Nations Cups, she went a stunning 13-2 in 15 events.

The PPS Card 📊

The Pidutti Point Share (PPS) system measures a player’s HHOF worthiness in a single comprehensive number. A player’s PPS score is tiered based on the HHOF standard for their position and era.

The PPS system doesn’t exist outside the NHL, so there’s no standard to act as a HHOF starting point. Instead, you’ll find Botterill’s Pace Card — her 82-game point pace across each of her six seasons in the top North American pro leagues of the day. Her worst season was a 133-point pace. Jaw dropping stuff. She would peak at a 184-point pace (a Gretzky-like 2.24 points per game!), earning the inaugural Angela James Bowl in 2007-08 as the CWHL’s first scoring champion.

The Comparisons 🧬

Absent a formal comparison tool, we’re going to keep it simple to identify Botterill’s company. Below are the all-time leaders in career points and 82-game point pace in IIHF World Championship history. Hint: it’s the best of the best. (Note: for recently retired players, their first year of eligibility is listed in the chart.)

What are the takeaways from Botterill’s comparisons?

There are no eligible players outside the HHOF that scored both more productively and more efficiently than her in the event’s history.
The unelected few ahead of Botterill in total points (Ouellette, Potter) or pace (Wendell-Pohl, Bye) are among the glaring absences from the HHOF. What sport is anyone near the top of major leaderboards yet waits years for potential election into their respective Halls of Fame?

The Answer ⚖️

Why has the HHOF been so slow to elect qualified women?

The primary reason so few women have been elected is a function of process over performance. There are two women on the 18-person Selection Committee — Cassie Campbell-Pascall and Cammi Granato. Prior to 2022, this number was one. Prior to 2018, this number was zero. So, in the 12 cycles women have been eligible for the HHOF, there have been an average of 0.3 women in a group of 18.

Now, I get it, this isn’t a panel that should be split down the middle by gender. Men’s hockey has a longer history, wider berth of players for potential selection, and the by-laws cap their annual inductees at a higher maximum. All good. But even with the additions of two female voices, is 11% of the Committee the right number?

The annual number of electees is capped at eight — four male players, two female players, two builders. Using that split as a guideline, a quarter of the Committee would be four or five women. Due to term limits, the HHOF can’t do this overnight. But women have been eligible for the Hall since 2010, so overnight has passed… for 13 years. The recent appointments of Campbell-Pascall and Granato are a wonderful sign, but the move has been slower than the Arizona Coyotes’ rebuild.

I have no doubt the male reps are open-minded, do exhaustive preparation, and have and will continue to nominate women on occasion. Since the process is confidential, we can’t know. But when you consider that 16 members of an 18-person panel either starred in the NHL, closely cover the NHL as media members, or are executives of male leagues with male players, it’s not a stretch to think they’ve got lifelong relationships and interests in the sport they’ve been lifers in. Does this leave one woman getting nominated annually? Two? More? Has it ever been zero?

Consequently, in the 11 cycles after Granato and James broke the barrier, there have been only seven women elected, or 0.6 per year out of the maximum two (32%). For men, they’ve filled 40 of 44 spots (91%). Imagine that. The process is therefore either suppressing female membership by design (unlikely), or misreading the impact that the Committee’s composition has on its selections.

The Verdict 🚦

Botterill’s candidacy doesn’t need further hype. She’s a slam dunk, first ballot player that has waited nearly a decade. So, we’ll double down by highlighting her deserving peer group.

She and fellow Canadian hopefuls Campbell-Pascall, Ouellette, Vicky Sunohara, goaltender Shannon Szabados and Americans Wendell-Pohl, Bye, Potter, Julie Chu, Meghan Duggan, and Monique Lamoureux are among the players that little girls throughout the 1990s and 2000s took up hockey to one day be like. These women are the fabric of the sport’s history, equal parts superstars and trailblazers. The HHOF has found room for nearly 200 pioneering male players that debuted before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, and so far, nine women.

Since 2011, the HHOF has elected 15 builders, one referee, the consensus seventh-best player on the Oilers dynasty (Kevin Lowe), and a defensive specialist (Guy Carbonneau), among others. All wonderful careers. But in that time, they’ve used one-third of their female slots. If this is about popularity, respectfully, museum patrons are not flocking to the sketch of Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs in the hallowed plaque room.

In public Twitter polling, Ouellette edged Botterill, a worthy choice given the former’s longer and comparably decorated career. In truth, there are many deserving, inner circle candidates, all worthy of their own articles.

Most importantly, adding female members to future Selection Committees, nominating more female candidates, and using the maximum two annual female player spots will help clear the backlog. From there, the HHOF can move toward building a reasonable standard for its female superstars.

Jennifer Botterill, Class of 2023, has a nice ring to it.

Catch up on the series by @AdjustedHockey:

Should six outstanding seasons get a player into the Hockey Hall of Fame? Featuring John LeClair
Do post-playing careers affect our view of HHOF cases? Featuring Rod Brind’Amour
How important should team playoff success be to a Hockey Hall of Fame case? Featuring Henrik Zetterberg
Why is the Hockey Hall of Fame so tough on goaltenders? Featuring Curtis Joseph

High Noon, Pace, High Noon & Pace Cards from Adjusted Hockey; All data from Elite Prospects and Hockey-Reference.com

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