An impressive list of NHL stars will be eligible for the 2025 Hall of Fame class. They will be joined by several players who have been left out of the Hall over the years, including Keith Tkachuk.

Tkachuk was one of the league’s biggest stars and was one of the top forwards of his era. He made a name for himself by combining physical play with elite goal-scoring. As a result, he finished his career with over 538 goals, 1,065 points, and 2,219 penalty minutes.

Despite his impressive numbers, Hall of Fame Voters have left Tkachuk off their ballots since he became eligible over a decade ago.

Will 2025 be the year when this finally changes?

Why Voters Have Not Elected Tkachuk

While voters have not all been open about their opinions around Keith Tkachuk’s Hall of Fame resume, a couple of issues are working against him.

The first is that the former star forward never made it past the third round of the playoffs. While plenty of players have made the Hall without winning a Stanley Cup, Tkachuk’s 18-year career makes the stat stand out when considered for Hockey’s highest honor.

Speaking of Tkachuk’s long career, that is likely another issue that has prevented him from reaching the Hall of Fame. Most of his time was during the NHL’s “dead puck era,” where the league saw an offensive decline from the 1994-95 lockout until the early 2,000s. That led to several players enjoying longer-than-average careers, including Tkachuk.

Lastly, how the game has changed since his retirement could affect how voters view him. While his goal-scoring stands independently, his time spent in the penalty box stands out even more. He could already have gotten into the Hall if he was a defenseman enforcer or a pure scorer. Instead, voters may have difficulty reconciling those two aspects of his game.

While his numbers remain impressive, voters aren’t giving them as much weight when considering his candidacy for the NHL Hall of Fame.

The Argument for Tkachuk to Make the Hall

There are many reasons why Keith Tkachuk should have been inducted into the Hall of Fame long ago.

One of the biggest is that Tkachuk is one of just 47 players to score over 500 goals in his career. Only four eligible players of that group are not in the Hall of Fame. While he benefited from an extended career thanks to the dead puck era, his goal-scoring during the league-wide offensive drought is impressive.

Tkachuk also enjoyed many awards and honors throughout his NHL career. He had ten top-five finishes in All-Star voting, finishing among the top three four times. He also played for the US in the Olympics and the 1996 World Cup.

Along with the awards, the forward also owns some impressive records. The biggest was when he became the first American to lead the NHL in scoring 52 goals in the 1996-1997 season. That impressive season also saw him become the fourth player in NHL history to score 50 goals and 200 penalty minutes in a single season, a feat that seems impossible today.

Will 2025 be Tkachuk’s Year?

Keith Tkachuk’s impressive numbers are worthy of the Hall of Fame, but his path becomes more challenging each year he is left out. Newer voters will have less familiarity with Tkachuk and his role during the NHL’s dead puck era as the years roll on.

That said, the Tkachuk name is still alive and well in the NHL. His sons Brady and Matthew have become stars in their own right, leading the Panthers to the Stanley Cup in 2024. While their play doesn’t affect his Hall of Fame resume, it keeps his name public. Many fans long for his era, when even skill players could be physical enforcers, which is no longer seen in the league.

While many believe that Keith Tkachuk’s impressive numbers warrant a Hall of Fame induction, predicting whether he will be selected can be challenging. As such, sports enthusiasts and analysts often turn to betting sites for insights into potential outcomes. Canada’s best betting sites will likely offer odds on Tkachuk’s chances of making the 2025 Hall of Fame class, reflecting the ongoing debate among voters and fans. Moreover, NHL betting trends might also influence how these odds are set, as the hockey community closely follows the shifting dynamics of the sport.

It seems more than possible that Keith will still be waiting to get in when both of his sons become eligible.

The problem with running a Hall of Fame-related website is that many of the big ones we cover all have announcements within months of each other.  The backbone of what we do is list-related, resulting in a long push to revise what we already have, specifically now with our Football Hockey and Basketball Lists.

At present, we have a minor update as we have completed the first ten of the 2024 Hockey List, which you can comment on and vote on:

The new 1 to 10:

11. Keith Tkachuk
12. Bernie Nicholls
13. Henrik Zetterberg
14. Ryan Getzlaf*
15. Carey Price*
16. P.K. Subban*
17. J.C. Tremblay
18. Ryan Miller
19. Lorne Chabot
20. Dave Taylor 

*Denotes First Year of Eligibility

Rankings are impacted annually based on your comments and votes.

Thank you all for your patience. We will soon unveil more changes to the football and basketball lists.

Regular visitors of Notinhalloffame.com know that we are slowly working on the top 50 of every major team in the NHL, NBA, NFL and MLB.  Once that is done, we intend to look at how each team honor their past players, coaches and executives.  As such, it is important to us that the

St. Louis Blues have announced that Pavol Demetria, Mike Liut and Keith Tkachuk will comprise their second full class.

Pavol Demetria was traded from the Ottawa Senators in 1996 and the Slovak would blossom two years later with an 89-Point season.  Demetria continued to be a point-per-game player with St. Louis, and would win the Lady Byng in the 1999-00 Season and played in three All-Star Games.  He signed with the Los Angeles Kings in 2005 after scoring 493 Points in 494 Games.  Tragically, this is a posthumous induction, as he was one of the players killed in the Lokomotiv Yarozlavl plane crash in 2011.

Mike Liut played his first two seasons of pro hockey with the Cincinnati Stingers of the WHA, and when that league folded, he joined the St. Louis Blues, who owned his NHL rights.  Liut immediately took over as the Blues primary Goalie, and held that for five-and-a-half years before he was traded to Hartford.  Liut’s first three seasons in St. Louis were excellent, peaking in the 1980-81 Season where he was the runner-up for the Hart, and the Lester B. Pearson winner.  He had a 151-139-52 record with a 3.59 GAA for the team.

Traded from the Phoenix Coyotes during the 2000-01 Season, Keith Tkachuk spent the second half of his career (save for 13 Games in Atlanta) with the Blues where he scored 427 Points.  He was an All-Star twice as a Blue.

The Blues Hall of Fame was incorporated last year with a large class that comprised Red Berenson, Scotty Bowman, Berne Federko, Bob Gassoff, Glenn Hall, Brett Hull, Dan Kelly, Al MacInnis, Barclay Plager, Bob Plager, Chris Pronger, the Solomons, Brent Sutter and Garry Unger

The team will honor the three during their home game on January 20 against the Washington Capitals.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to congratulate the impending members of the St. Louis Blues Hall of Fame.