Are the Sedins Worthy of the Hockey Hall of Fame?

8 years ago

It’s a question that you’ve heard before and undoubtedly one that you will hear again, especially as this decade comes to a close: are the Sedins worthy of induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame?

For me, the answer is a resounding yes, but last I checked, the Hall of Fame committee wasn’t putting a particularly high value on my opinion. So instead, I will use this lovely September day to provide a sample of the ever-mounting evidence that Daniel and Henrik Sedin are deserving of being immortalized in hockey’s greatest shrine.

First and foremost, no discussion of potential Hall of Fame candidates should be conducted without reference to The Inductinator. The Inductinator is the brainchild of Iain Fyffe of Hockey Prospectus. Fyffe is a leader in Hall of Fame research and has developed a formula that essentially reverse engineers the selection process.

The Inductinator calculates a score for every hockey player and any player who achieves a score of 100 or more meets the implicit standards of the Hall of Fame selection committee.

– Iain Fyffe, Hockey Abstract 2014

Production, longevity, and awards (both team and individual) are all taken into account in a weighted formula that spits out a nice simple number. The higher your number, the better your chances.

In this article, I’ll take some direction from the Inductinator as I analyze the achievements of the Sedins and where they are left on the Hall of Fame scale.

Production

	Regular Season	Playoffs
	GP	G	A	P	GP	G	A	P
Henrik Sedin	1092	211	704	915	105	23	55	78
Daniel Sedin	1061	327	554	881	102	25	46	71

(Numbers from NHL.com)

As it stands now, Henrik and Daniel are sitting on 915 and 881 points respectively. With 3 more years remaining on their current contracts, the Sedins should be able to hit 1000 points with relative ease – even a fairly conservative average of 50 points per season gives each of them enough points to break the 1000-point barrier with room to spare.

1000 points seems to be an important milestone in determining Hall of Fame likelihood. There are 82 NHL players and alumni that have amassed more than 1000 points. Among those 82 players, 52 are currently enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Of the remaining 30 players, five are still active, and five more are retired but not yet eligible for induction to the Hall of Fame. That leaves 18 eligible players that are still awaiting the call (if it is to ever come).

With 704 assists, Henrik currently sits at 51st all-time in NHL helpers, and could conceivably break into the top 30 by the time he retires (that would require another 100 or so). Daniel doesn’t sit quite as highly in any particular category. While only 50 players have more assists than Henrik, there are 158 players with more goals than Daniel, and 101 players with more assists. Nevertheless, the Hall of Fame values goals more than assists, so Daniel’s production resume is actually more valuable despite being in less exclusive company. Daniel gains a few Inductinator points by surpassing the 300 goal mark, and likewise Henrik is hurt by the fact that he is highly unlikely the reach that level.

According to a update in the 2015 Hockey Abstract, other factors that would accrue the Sedins Inductinator points include playing more than 950 NHL games (both have already surpassed this mark) and seasons with more than 100 points scored (something they have each done a single time).

The factor that is more likely than any other to sink the Sedins Hall of Fame chances is their goal totals – Henrik much more so than Daniel. Despite the fact that you could make the argument that Henrik has benefited Daniel more than Daniel has benefited Henrik throughout their careers, the fact remains that the Hall values scorers over playmakers, and thus Daniel’s chances look substantially better. One and a half lockouts during their careers also hamper their point totals (ex-CA writer Dmitri Filipovic estimated a loss of approximately 140 career points).

Awards

Awards are another factor that the Hall of Fame values highly, both of the individual and team variety. While the Sedins are not overrun with NHL accolades, they have earned their fair share of honors.

Both have been members of the NHL’s post-season All-Star team twice – Henrik a First Team All-Star in consecutive years (2010 and 2011), while Daniel was named a Second Team All-Star in 2010 and a First Team All-Star in 2011. According to Fyffe’s research, post-season All-Star Teams are the most highly valued factors in determining Hall of Fame chances for forwards, with First and Second Team selection being weighted equally. According to Fyffe, 29% of players with 2 or more post-season All-Star selections became Hall of Famers.

Each Sedin has earned an Art Ross Trophy as the league’s scoring champion, Henrik in 2010 and Daniel in 2011, both cresting the 100 point mark in their respective league leading seasons. Each won an award as the league’s most valuable player in those same years: Henrik took home the prestigious Hart Trophy as league MVP in 2010, and Daniel received the Ted Lindsay Award for being the 2011 MVP as judged by the players. Unsurprisingly, both the Hart and Ted Lindsay trophies are worth a fair bit according to the formula, though evidently the Art Ross itself doesn’t carry as much weight.

The Art Ross Trophy has been awarded 65 times to 27 different players since its inception. Of those 27 winners, only 10 remain outside of the Hall of Fame: Jaromir Jagr, Jarome Iginla, Martin St. Louis, Joe Thornton, Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Jamie Benn and Henrk and Daniel Sedin. The connection? None of these players are eligible yet (9 are still active). In other words, every Hall of Fame eligible player that has won an Art Ross Trophy has been inducted.

In international play, the Sedins took home an Olympic Gold Medal in 2006, and were dominant leaders on the 2013 Swedish club that won Gold at the World Championships. International success is an important part of the selection criteria.

While the Sedins led a team to a Clarence Campbell Trophy and two President’s Trophies, they are obviously lacking the ultimate prize. The absence of a Stanley Cup on their resumes (so far) undoubtedly works against them, but they certainly wouldn’t be the first players to get into the hall without it.

The Twin Factor

The Sedins have something working for them that no one else does. They are, as you may have noticed, twins. Occurring at a rate of just 3 in 1000 pregnancies, monozygotic (identical) twinning is a scientific marvel in itself. The relevance of this should not be understated – the Hall enjoys uniqueness and novelty.

The Sedins, while being genetically identical to each other, are entirely separate from the rest of the sporting world. In no other sport have a set of identical twins been so successful, and in such a similar manner. If it wasn’t for a few injuries to Daniel, their point totals may be even more similar than they already are. As of the writing of this article, Henrik’s points per game sits at 0.84 while Daniel’s is a nearly identical 0.83.

Check out this list of the top point producers by rate since the full season lockout.

(5-on-5 Points/60, 2005-15, minimum 5000 minutes, via war-on-ice.com)

I honestly don’t know which is more impressive, the company they’re keeping up near the top of the list, or the fact that they have identical points per 60 minutes over a span of 10 fricken years. This level of familial similarity is unheard of in sports in general, let alone in hockey.

Even without the twin factor, they are still two of the most successful brothers to ever play the game. While there are a few sets of siblings that have combined for over 2000 NHL points, the points in these cases are unevenly distributed. For instance, the Gretzky brothers own the sibling record, but Wayne’s 2,857 points dwarfs Brent’s 4 points. Other siblings are closer, such as the Hulls or the Richards, but they still do not approach the production similarity that Henrik and Daniel share.

In fact, if (or when) the Sedins hit a thousand points apiece, they will be the first and only set of brothers to do so in the history of the NHL. Once again, the Hall appreciates NHL records, even obscure ones. At the time of their retirement, it seems likely that the Sedins will sit 6th all-time in points from a single family (a list on which they have to contend with larger groups like the Stastnys and the Sutters).

In addition to their identical production, the twin factor has provided hockey viewers with 15 years of unparalleled chemistry, something that we in Vancouver affectionately refer to as Sedinery. This too is something that is likely never to be seen again, and thus should be recognized appropriately.

The Competition

Induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame is not always as simple as whether one deserves to be in. It is also about whether one deserves to be in more so than his peers. For this reason, it is prudent to examine which other players may be eligible at the same time as the Sedins. Since only 4 players are inducted per year, the Sedins would take up half an induction class. On top of that, they will not only be up against any other players who have come into eligibility, but also against all previously eligible players that have yet to get in.

(Source: Hockey Abstract 2015 Update)

There are currently 10 players that have scores above 100 and are already eligible for the Hall of Fame. This list includes names like Paul Kariya, Mark Recchi and former Canuck captain Markus Naslund (who Dmitri campaigned for a couple of years back). By the time the Sedins retire, there will be more names ready for induction including Jaromir Jagr, Teemu Selanne and Martin St. Louis (all first balloters). Furthermore, when the Sedins are finally eligible for induction, they’ll probably be competing with the likes of Jarome Iginla, Joe Thornton and Pavel Datsyuk.

The bottom line is that, if the Sedins are going to get in, they may going to have to wait a few years after they become eligible for the Hall to induct players that achieved higher scores.

The Formulas

When you feed the Inductinator the Sedins’ numbers and accomplishments, what does it tell us? Apparently nothing to be too optimistic about. The Inductinator currently gives Henrik a meager score of 25, while Daniel sports a slightly better 49. Once the twins break the thousand point barrier, Daniel and Henrik’s scores improve to approximately 75 and 50 respectively. Those numbers are obviously better, but they are still quite a ways away from the Inductinator’s acceptable threshold for Hall of Fame acceptance.*

*It’s worth noting that Phil Housley was inducted in 2014 despite having an Inductinator score of just 75 – by far the lowest number in the post-expansion era. So it seems that there is some occasional flexibility with the numbers.

There is an alternative to the Inductinator that is available to us. Before he entered the employ of the Montreal Canadiens, Matt Pfeffer created his own Hall of Fame formula, called HOF+, and published it in The Hockey News. The principles are roughly the same – it even uses GVT (Goals Versus Threshold), developed at Hockey Prospectus, the site where the Inductinator originated.

Where the HOF+ metric differs from the Inductinator is that it accounts more succinctly for peak success, rather than simply career success – something that bodes well for the Sedins, who took a few years to get going. Again, the goal is to get a score of 100 or greater on the HOF+ scale, which is a combination of the HOFPeak+ scale and HOFCareer+ scale.

Player	Career GVT	Peak GVT	HOFCareer+	HOFPeak+	HOF+	HOF Chances
Henrik Sedin	155.2	21.1	70.5	97.7	68.2	61.7%
Daniel Sedin	167.0	22.7	75.8	104.9	80.8	70.1%

If you add in the 1000 point bonus that the Sedins are quite likely to get, the Inductinator score and the HOFCareer+ score are somewhat similar. In Pfeffer’s formula, the Sedins then get a boost from a solid set of peak years, where they won their scoring titles and awards. His formula also includes a percentage representing their likelihood of induction (derived from the percentage of players with those same scores that have already been inducted – like a PCS percentage for the Hall of Fame).

While neither suggests that the twins are slam dunks to enter the Hall, the HOF+ formula seems to like their chances a little better.

The Verdict

I’m going to go out on a limb here and go against the conclusion of the Inductinator. Despite its previous success as a predictive mechanism, I do believe that the Sedins are a special case and that they will be recognized when their time comes. It is their production and accolades that push them into the conversation, but it will be their uniqueness that bumps them over the edge.

It’s unlikely that they will be first ballot Hall of Famers, but before too many years pass by, I expect their names to be called. Sometime in the not-so-distant future, I believe the Sedin twins (and sweet, glorious Sedinery) will be rightfully and permanently enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame.