Hockey Hall of Fame chairman Mike Gartner still remembers the call he received with the news that he was being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2001.
Gartner, who was inducted in his first year of eligibility, said he was totally unprepared when he got the call from then-selection committee chairman Jim Gregory, even though he knew it was a possibility.
“It was very emotional,” said Gartner told TSN.ca. “It’s an emotional thing, and almost every player or builder that gets put in the Hall of Fame has the same reaction.”
Gartner’s NHL career started with the Washington Capitals in 1979-80 and ended with the Phoenix Coyotes in 1997-98, with stops with the Minnesota North Stars, New York Rangers and Toronto Maple Leafs in between.
Gartner skated in 1,432 career NHL games and scored 708 goals with 1,335 points. He is one of eight players to score 700+ goals in his career and is second in NHL history for the most 30-plus goal seasons with 17, second only to Alex Ovechkin’s 19 and counting.
Gartner served on the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee starting in 2009 before being named chair of the committee in 2022. His 15-year tenure on the committee came to an end in June of 2024 but shortly after he was offered the job as Hall of Fame chairman to succeed Lanny McDonald, whose 10-year tenure ended in June.
Now that he’s chair of the entire Hall, Gartner is no longer one of the 18 voting members of the selection committee. From his time there, he is well aware of the scrutiny the Hall gets whenever the latest group of inductees is unveiled.
“We obviously always get scrutinized, which is fine, because we should be scrutinized,” said Gartner. “And some people agree with our choices. Some people are upset that other people didn’t go in. That’s usually the case, and we say the same thing all the time, and that is that if someone is a Hall of Famer, they will eventually get into the Hall of Fame. Maybe not the time that everybody would like them to, but they will be a Hall of Famer.”
This year’s Hall of Fame class, who will be formally inducted in the annual ceremony on Nov. 10, features six players and two builders.
Zdeno Chara, Duncan Keith, Joe Thornton and Alexander Mogilny are the four former NHLers going in, with Jennifer Botterill and Brianna Decker in the women’s category and Danièle Sauvageau and Jack Parker as builders. Sauvageau also has the distinction of being the first woman inducted into the builder category.
While Chara, Keith, Thornton and Decker all got in in their first year of induction eligibility, Mogilny and Botterill had longer waits for their call to the Hall.
Mogilny, who last played in the NHL in 2005-06, scored 473 goals with 1,093 points in 990 career games and is a member of the Triple Gold Club after winning a Stanley Cup in 2000 with the New Jersey Devils, having already won Olympic and World Championship gold medals with the Soviet Union.
He made history as the first Soviet player to defect to North America to play in the NHL and was the first Russian to be named an NHL captain.
Botterill is a three-time Olympic gold medalist for Canada and won five World Championship titles. In college, she took home the Patty Kazmaier Award as the top NCAA women’s player twice while playing for Harvard.
She last played in 2010-11 when she was a member of the Toronto Furies in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League, before going on to a career as a studio analyst for Hockey Night in Canada.
Having the privilege of both receiving the call as well as being the one to tell other inductees they’re going to the Hall, Gartner says every player shares the same sentiment upon induction.
“I think when you ask people that are going in the Hall of Fame, one of the things that is a constant comment of all the inductees, and that is that it’s something that no one ever dreams of,” said Gartner. “You dream of winning championships. You dream of playing at the highest level, in the Olympics, in the world championships, in the National Hockey League.
“But no one ever dreams of going into the Hall of Fame. It seems too lofty. And less than two per cent of all the players that play actually get that honour.”
