The 'Hall of Pretty Good'

Here's the NHL's version (For many of the expansion teams it is predicted off of current or recent rosters)

Anaheim – Paul Kariya
Atlanta – Marian Hossa
Boston – Andy Moog
Buffalo – Dale Hawerchuk
Calgary – Theo Fleury
Carolina/Hartford – Pat Verbeek
Chicago – Steve Larmer
Colorado – Adam Foote
Columbus – RIck Nash
Dallas – Neal Broten
Detroit – Brendan Shanahan
Edmonton – Doug Weight
Florida – Scott Mellanby (a stretch even here, not many options though)
LA – Bernie Nicholls
Minnesota – Marian Gaborick
Nashville – Cliff Ronning
New Jersey – Scott Stevens
Long Island – Brent Sutter
New York Rangers – James Patrick
Ottawa – Wade Redden
Philly – Rick Tocchet
Phoenix/Winnipeg – Randy Carlyle
Pittsburgh – Scott Stevens
San Jose – Owen Nolan
St. Louis – Keith Tkachuck
Tampa Bay – Brad Richards (Current)/Darren Puppa (past)
Toronto – Felix Potvin
Vancouver – Pavel Bure
Washington – Rod Langway

 

I think Rick Martin is the perfect Buffalo Sabre for this thread. Pretty damn good, some outstanding yearsbut not quite HOF (I think, maybe he is in the HHOF). Danny Gare also qualifies, even though he did ruin his career by playing for the Red Wings.

 

Help me out here, Beef. You're saying that Shanahan and Stevens shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame? Both of them will blow the doors off the place.

And maybe you're saying that these other two shouldn't be in there, but Hawerchuk and Langway already are.

 

I assume you mean Kevin Stevens for the Penguins? He was a badass before he broke his face during the '93 playoffs. That was the beginning of the end of a great run by the flightless birds.

 

His dad should be in the HHOF. Ralph Mellanby was the executive producer and backbone of CBC's Hockey Night In Canada telecasts for more than 20 years.

As for Scott, he's had a long and distinguished career. Hopefully Atlanta will deal him to the Leafs at the trade deadline so he can finally win a Cup after 21 seasons.

 

I hate to steal someone else's material, but you, sir, are now dead to me.

As far as I'm concerned, there should be a special "Dale Murphy Room" in the HoF. Anyone who was a Braves during the Murph era will agree.

Those were some hard times. And Dale Murphy, with his crazy mole, is all we had. The guy carried thousands of fans on his back for a long, long time. And if I'm not mistaken, the year after the Braves mercifully traded him away, they won the NLCS.

That has to be worth something more than the hall of pretty good.

 

Two great seasons. Tons of average ones. Icon? Maybe. HOFer? No way.

 

Did he get in any snaps during his rookie season?

 

Yes, so Bledsoe threw the only TD in that drive. Who did the legwork to shorten the field? BRADY.

The week before, Brady and the Pats were shut out in the first half against the Raiders. Do you know how that game ended?

So you want us to presume that Brady, who had better stats than Bledsoe in a shorter amount of time against the Steelers and has since proven to be the greatest big-game QB in teh league, would have found a way to fritter away a game against the mistake-prone Steelers. And it's a GOOD BREAK for the Patriots to lose their great, HOF-bound QB against the Steelers? Ooooookay then.

It's also funny you say Brady had nothing going on that day when your Steelers were quarterbacked by Kordell Stewart, whom nobody has ever confused for a clutch QB. You might have forgotten, but Stewart threw THREE picks that day. THREE. That's THREE more picks than were thrown by Brady, whom the Patriots needed to lose in order to win that game.

As for the so-called debate over who to start in the Super Bowl, it was never really a debate. It was just Belichick being Belichick and witholding the information as long as he could.

Please put away the Terrible Towel before posting. Thank you.

 

A few points from someone who, well, was there for every frickin' second of the 2001 playoffs.

1. Bledsoe's contribution to victory was spectacular because it was so surprising. But neither he nor Brady won that game. The two quarterbacks didn't LOSE it, but the heroes were Troy Brown (TD off punt return, part of long-run lateral TD off blocked field goal) and the defense (smushed Steelers running game). You gentlemen are arguing over a sideshow.
2. Brady's ankle looked very, very bad in the locker room that Sunday night. Two days later at media day, he still was kind of hopping a bit. Belichick said that day he'd give Brady first team snaps at the first practice and see if he could handle them. When he didn't keel over in pain Wednesday afternoon, Brady was named starter Wednesday night.
It really was a medical decision of a starter over a backup. Nothing more to it. God, suppose Drew had had to start and the sissy Rams STILL blew the game? The QB war would be starting fatal bar fights in this town to this day.

 

The Terrible Towel sits on its hanger in the closet. It only comes out on game days. What Kordell has to do with any of this, I'm really not sure. But congratulations for working it in there.
The decisive moment in that game for the Pats was Bledsoe's drive. Brady would not have gotten it done there; the Steelers were prepared for him. They were not ready for DB. And why would anyone have trouble believing that Brady was not yet Brady? A week before, he half-fumbled away NE's chance to advance, only to be saved by a dubious interpretation of a dubious rule. Brady was in the process of becoming Brady at that point. You act as if he walked across the Allegheny River on the way to the game.

 

I resent the insinuation that the pro-Bledsoe argument here is simply Steelers fanboyishness. I'm as blatant a Steelers fanboy as there is on this board and I agree that it is ridiculous to give Bledsoe that much credit for one good drive.

It was a big drive, but it wasn't nearly as big a turning point as the blocked punt return for a touchdown or Brown's punt return for a score after a booming punt that had pinned the Patriots deep in their own end was called back on a penalty.

Kordell Stewart was bad, but it was the special teams that were truly awful for the Steelers that day. Hmmm...quarterback turning the ball over too much and horrendous special teams. Sounds like the current team.