Former Washington Capitals winger Mike Gartner is in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Here is why his inclusion is more about when versus how well he played in the NHL.
Mike Gartner was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2012. He played 19 seasons in the NHL scoring 708 goals which ranks as the seventh most in the history of the NHL. Gartner played the first nine seasons and part of his tenth season with the Washington Capitals.
He was traded with Larry Murphy on March 7, 1989 to the Minnesota North Stars for Dino Ciccarelli and Bob Rouse in a deal that involved three future Hall of Fame players.
Gartner’s career was defined by scoring at least 30 goals in 15 straight seasons. The 30 goal mark is an impressive benchmark in the NHL today. But was it as impressive when Gartner played in the 1980’s and early 1990’s?
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In 1979-80, Gartner’s first year in the NHL, the average goals scored by a team in one game was 3.5. The number would climb to 4.0 for the 1981-82 season and would stay at or above 3.5 until the 1993-94 season. Coincidentally, Gartner’s 30 goal season scoring streak aligned with the most prolific and sustained goal scoring spree in the history of the NHL.
When you standardize the games played per season and the different goal scoring rates per year, the 30 goals scored per season in the 1980s in an 80 game season is equivalent to 22 goals scored for a 82 game season over the past 10 years. All of a sudden, Mike Gartner’s most significant career milestone doesn’t look as shiny.
If you apply the same logic to his 19 year career, Gartner’s 708 goals scored from 1979-80 to 1997-98 would convert to 525 goals scored from 1997-98 to 2015-16. While 525 goals scored is a significant number of goals, it likely wouldn’t grab your attention as much since it would rank 35th most goals in NHL history rather than fifth most at the time of retirement.
Another significant goal scoring benchmark is 50 goals in one season. Gartner accomplished this feat only once when he scored 50 goals in the 1984-85 season. For the season, Gartner scored the eleventh most goals in the NHL and he didn’t even lead his own team as Bobby Carpenter scored 53 for the Caps.
Playoff success is another barometer used to judge a players value. During his career, Gartner only once played past the second round of the playoffs making it to the third round in the 1993-94 season with Toronto. His Capitals legacy will always be remembered as a leader on Caps teams that consistently underachieved in the playoffs.
In the 1993-94 season, Gartner started the season as a member of the New York Rangers. The team would eventually go on to win the Stanley Cup after captain Mark Messier guaranteed a game six victory over the New Jersey Devils in the Eastern Conference Finals. But Gartner’s name is not engraved on the Cup as he was traded at the deadline to the Toronto Maple Leafs for six-time Stanley Cup champion Glenn Anderson.
Post season awards are yet another way to measure a player’s performance against his peers. For his professional career, Gartner did not win a single trophy. He received the 31st most votes for the Selke trophy one year and averaged the 12th most votes for three consecutive years for the Lady Byng trophy.
He was not named to a single post season all-star team. He was voted twice as the fourth best right winger after the 1984-85 and 1987-88 seasons.
From his age 20 to age 28 season, the prime of his career, Gartner averaged as the eighth best right wing. If there was an All-Decade team for the 1980’s, he would be the fourth line right wing on the second team. Does that sound like a player that should be in the Hall of Fame?
Mike Gartner had a very good career. It is just that his career happened to overlap an era in the NHL when the goals per game per team was at its highest, 3.54. The average in all other years was only 2.83.
The Hall of Fame is meant for the best of the best. Gartner does not belong in this group. While there is no way to retract his inclusion, his candidacy is a lesson the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee need to remember when considering future players for admission. Just one problem with that – Gartner himself is one of the 18 members on the selection committee.