Welcome to LWOS Hockey’s summer series, Call to the Hall, where we take a look at the next great player from each NHL franchise to get called to the Hockey Hall of Fame. There are a few caveats, the player must be active, and must have played 300 games (or 150 for goaltenders) with the franchise.
Check out the previous Call to the Hall articles HERE.
Call to the Hall: Philadelphia Flyers
The Flyers have a long history of success, missing the playoffs just ten times since entering the league in 1967 and winning two Stanley Cups, and likewise have a long history of sending players to the Hockey Hall of Fame, with Bobby Clarke, Bernie Parent and Ed Snider in the builder category being the most prominent of the 16 names enshrined in the hall.
However, when it comes to current Hall of Fame options, there aren’t many players to choose from. There are a number of members of the team’s current young core, such as Jakub Voracek, who haven’t yet hit the 300 games threshold and are therefore ineligible for this series. Likewise, recently retired Kimmo Timonen might have been a good candidate as well.
That leaves a trio of veterans as the most viable candidates from which to choose, including Scott Hartnell, Claude Giroux, and Jeff Carter. Despite being a fan favorite, we can probably discount Hartnell straight away because the stats simply aren’t there. That leaves the debate to between two options, Giroux and Carter.
While for most fans (and certainly for Flyers fans in particular) the choice should be quite obvious, one has to consider the type of criteria that Hall of Fame voters look at when determining whether a player is worthy of induction or not. Among those are certain individual milestones and accomplishments, but also team accomplishments both in the NHL and internationally. By the slimmest of margins, at this point in time Carter has a better case for the hall than Giroux.
Jeff Carter
Carter was a 1st round, 11th-overall draft choice of the Flyers in 2003 and entered the league after a solid junior career with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds in the OHL, during which he scored 246 points in 236 games. Carter scored 23 goals (and 42 points) as an NHL rookie, the first of nine 20-goal seasons in his career so far, establishing himself as a player who wouldn’t always put up huge point totals, but would prove to be an excellent goal-scorer with a nose for the net and world-class shot.
Carter set career-highs in the 2008-09 season, scoring 46 goals (2nd in the NHL) and 84 points (12th in the NHL) and make his first NHL all-star game appearance. He followed up that year with consecutive 30-goal, 60-point campaigns (33 goals, 61 points in 2009-10 and 36 goals, 66 points in 2010-11). They would, however, be his last seasons in Philadelphia.
With a hefty 11-year, $58 million contract signed back in 2010, it was thought Carter would be a Flyer for life, but the team was looking to restructure their roster, and he found himself traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets in the summer of 2011.
Columbus proved to be a poor fit for Carter (despite 15 goals and 25 points in 39 games as a Jacket), and he one again found himself on the move when he was shipped to the Los Angeles Kings in February 2012. For Carter and the Kings, it was a match made in heaven.
Carter became a force for Los Angeles in the playoffs in 2012, leading the league in both goals (eight) and game-winning goals (three) in the post-season. After scoring in overtime to win Game 2 of the final against the New Jersey Devils, his third game-winning goal would be the Stanley Cup-clincher in Game 6, as the Kings and Carter would finish the year as Cup champions.
Carter would follow up a strong lockout-shortened campaign (26 goals, 4th in the NHL) with a solid 2013-14 season (27 goals, 50 points) and an even better playoffs. In the Kings 2014 Stanley Cup, Carter would finish second in both goals (10) and points (25) and was a leading contender for the Conn Smythe Trophy as the league’s post-season MVP while again being a key component to the Kings second Stanley Cup championship in three seasons.
To this point in his NHL career, Carter has scored 283 goals and 522 points in 718 games for a 0.73 points per game average.
Carter has been a star for Team Canada on the international stage as well, first capturing gold at the IIHF World U-18 Championships in 2003, a silver and a gold at the 2004 and 2005, respectively, World Junior Championships before capping off his international resume with another gold at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. He is largely remembered for scoring a hattrick against Austria at the Sochi games, a tournament in which a defensively sound yet goal-starved Team Canada scored only 17 times.
So now we get to the crux of the matter: just how Carter gets more hall consideration than Giroux at this point in time. There’s no debate that Giroux is one of the NHL’s stars currently, scoring more points than any other NHL player over the last five season. However, what Carter has that Giroux lacks is the milestones, most notably in the goal-scoring department, which hall voters tend to favor over assists.
Giroux has a career-high of 28 goals in a season, a number which Carter has met or exceeded five times in his career, and while Carter looks to be a good bet to get up to 400 career goals, Giroux will really have to increase his scoring rate to hit that number. While Giroux’s 0.91 points-per-game and 0.62 assists-per-game blow Carter’s numbers (0.73 and 0.33) out of the water, Carter likewise does the same when it comes to goals (Carter’s 0.39 per game to Giroux’s 0.29). So while Giroux is more likely to finish with more points than Carter based on his lofty assist totals, he simply can’t match Carter when it comes to goal-scoring.
So, with individual awards being a wash (neither has won any), it comes down to team success. Here Carter obviously comes out on top. Twice Carter has been a key figure in helping a team secure a Stanley Cup championship. Giroux has (again) produced more points than Carter, but in terms of goals, game-winning goal, and results (Giroux’s teams have advanced beyond the second round only once), Carter has the distinct edge. Outstanding post-seasons have turned many great players into legends, and Carter has done it twice. Multiple Stanley Cups and an Olympic gold trump all.
Ultimately, Giroux may end up having a better career, he may win scoring titles, MVPs, or championships, but at this point in time, and looking at the criteria available to us, Carter would have a likelier chance of getting into the Hockey Hall of Fame if the vote were to be held today.
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