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Ugh, no.
Larmer at least had an interesting case, though ultimately I think he also failed to meet the Hall standard.
But Leach? Come on, man. He had one huge season when he led the league in goals, and two other very good goal scoring seasons (both times finishing seventh). But even in his biggest season he finished only 15th in total points, and never on any other occasion made the top 20, often finishing well below even that.
666 points in 934 games playing virtually his entire career in the 1970s, on a line with Bobby Clarke? I get that he's beloved by Flyers fans, but being beloved does not make you a hall of famer. No amount of "intangibles" or "clutch play" or "proven winner" can rationalize that level of statistical mediocrity into a hall of fame case. Just as a quick example, adjusting for era Slava Kozlov was a better offensive producer than Leach (albeit not quite as good a goal scorer and without a "signature" accomplishment like Leach's 61 goals), and hey, he won 2 Cups! Proven winner, that guy. Hall material.
The comparables given in the blog are patently ridiculous. Rule of thumb: if you're using Clark Gillies as a comparable, your player is not a Hall of Famer. Just because the Hall has made some stupid decisions doesn't mean they have to admit everyone who clears the lowest bar they've ever set. If Gillies is your bar, then you'd have to let 25% of everyone who ever played in.
Moving on, Federko and Clarke might have been marginally behind Leach in terms of goal production, but the tradeoff is that both were significantly better playmakers and, ergo, overall point producers. Federko finished in the top 10 in NHL scoring 5 times. Clarke finished in the top 10 in NHL scoring 7 times, including 3 times in the top 5. As mentioned above, Leach only cracked the top TWENTY once, and was usually well below that.
And Larionov? Never mind the fact that even if you restrict the case entirely to just their NHL careers the two are virtually dead even in NHL point scoring, even though Leach played virtually his entire NHL career as a 20-something in the 70s and Larionov played virtually his entire NHL career as a 30/40-something in the dead puck era.
But Larionov's hall case is based on the fact that he was a dominant force in Soviet hockey for a decade, as the top line center on CSKA (which won the domestic championship all 8 years Larionov was there) as well as a Soviet team that won the best-on-best 1981 Canada Cup and continued to beat up Olympic and World Championship competition in the 80s.
In order to get Leach into Larionov's class you have to ignore the best decade of Larionov's career (just because it wasn't in the NHL) and then you have to ignore the fact that Larionov was a much older player making a difficult transition into a much stronger and better defensive league than Leach's NHL.
Leach was better than Clark Gillies. I'll give you that. The rest of the argument fails completely. |
