There may be better comparisons but with the depth of scoring, platoon goaltending, and each team laying claim to the best player in the world, it is really fun to compare these stats.  Suffice it to say, comparing the scoring back then to now is like comparing Tipper Gore to Caligula:  the orgy of goal-scoring was shared throughout the league.

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I think Olie will never get in, unfortunately, mainly because Roy, Hasek and Brodeur were his contemporaries and he has no Stanley Cup, although he is very close to Billy Smith's career win total.

Bondra scored goals in the clutch and grab era when nobody scored goals.  He scored 52 goals in 97-98 when 5 Eatern Conf  teams gave up fewer than 200 goals.  I say based on his peers, he gets in.

It is a travesty that Dino is not in the Hall. Today,  we admire the career of Joe Sakic, who scored a point a game for twenty years and won a couple of Cups.  Dino had 608 goals, 1,200 points in 1,232 games - what the hell is up with that?

Thoughts?   

Abel to Yzerman's blog attests it is, with the too many many on the ice of Game 3 being the most notorious non-call since Brett Hull's foot decorated the crease.  Does anyone really believe this to be true?  I think there have been some serious non-calls like Kunitz's notorious cross check to Varly shortly before Sid tied up the score [Ed. note: that goal didn't, in fact, tie the score], and any number of holding/interference calls by the slower Pens D when the faster Wings try to dump and chase.

Is there an agenda to champion the Pens?  I personally think these conspiracies are hooey.  But I don't know in this case.

I moved to Pittsburgh 20 years ago - a DC native born at Georgetown Univ hospital, grew up in the MD 'burbs of Rockville and Bethesda.  Although the Skins, Bullets and O's were my initial loves, the Caps quickly became my favorite.

Moving to Pittsburgh was a pleasant surprise from a quality of life perspective:  I could afford a home in the city;  there are good schools, many patrons of the arts, and a handful of very good restaurants.  While DC obviously has the Burgh beat on many scores, the people of Pittsburgh are by and large good hearted and generous.   I have to laugh at DC area folks' characterizations of Pittsburgh and its denizens as dirty and low class, but in life you can't possibly know the appeal of ANYTHING until you experience it firsthand.  It's a really nice place to live and my family has a nice life.  Except...

It sucks to be a Caps Fan here.   Oh the humanity!  I feel like a war correspondent, reporting back over the years on the CMB and now thankfully, on JP's amazing blog.  Is there any thing else that's need to be said about our boys' futility against the Pens?  I think not. 

It has been...interesting.  I have worn my Ovechkin sweater to Home Depot with people gawking  you like a circus freak.  I have bought  a  rookie named Jaromir Jagr a condom (actually two) in a sports bar,  while wearing a  Caps sweatshirt.  (The serial Art Ross winner obviously lacked the mechanical acumen to operate the dispenser but clearly had won over female Pens fans' hearts early on.)    I have endured the indignity of buying a Sidney Crosby third jersey for my otherwise beautiful daughter, and happily walked hand in hand with her through the Igloo.  Sadly, I have endured the unbearable humiliation of the playoff series losses in '92,'95, '96, '00, and '01 and the stigma that brings.  

Know this:  there is an overzealous Caps Fan in the steel valley of the darkness, a beacon of red in a vile sea of contemptuous black and gold, rocking the red with my bad self.  There will never be a better opportunity to obliterate these awful memories and emptiness.