Harley Hotchkiss was part of the consortium that brought (or rescued) the Flames from Atlanta and brought them to Calgary. He also worked to build the Saddledome, which was built for the Calgary Flames and served as the Hockey venue for the 1988 Winter Olympics. Likely what secured Hotchkiss’ Hall of Fame induction was his long serving tenure as the Chairman on the NHL’s Board of Governors. We will wager without that last role on his resume, he would not have gotten in.

Dick Duff was a very good player who was on six Stanley Cup winning rosters, but for a forward his overall points total was decent but perhaps not Hall of Fame worthy based on his era. However, his points per game increased in the post season, and he was a key contributor on many of those Cups, and not just a bystander. It is not a terrible induction, but it was not exactly a snub had Dick Duff never been included.

Valeri Kharlamov never played in the National Hockey League, but every NHL fan in the 1970’s knew who he was.   Vladislav Tretiak may have received most of the attention in the Soviet Red Army, but it was the scoring prowess of Kharlamov that ran the engine. In addition to the passing and stickhandling fundamentals that were ingrained in the Russian players, Kharlamov was a flash on the ice and could maneuver around defenders effortlessly.

Murray Costello played 162 NHL games in the 1950’s and was a top executive in the Western Hockey League, but these are not the reasons that he was selected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2005 as a builder. Primarily, it was his near twenty year stint as the President of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association that got him in. In that period, he saw the merging of the CAHA and Hockey Canada to put together a more cohesive program. Costello also was a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors (OK, that might have helped got him in too), and was once a member of the selection committee.