Lowe finally placed among the stars of Oilers in the Hall of Fame

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Kevin Lowe was happy to be in the same general orbit as the Edmonton OIlers stars.

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On Monday night, he became the seventh in his Hall of Fame constellation. The stay-at-home defender joined five others who thought Hall’s dream was out of their reach or had to wait another year for the ceremony due to COVID-19.

Lowe thanked the selection committee for recognizing his position, although there was a long campaign undertaken by Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Glen Anderson, Grant Fuhr and Paul Coffey to recognize his stronghold of the Blue Line.

Lowe’s role in five Edmonton Cups and one in New York was often overshadowed by offensive talent, but he noted that the Canadiens great Jacques Lemaire and Oilers assistant coaches John Muckler and Ted Green reminded him that there are two. nets in hockey on which the winning strategy is based.

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“What made us unbeatable was our preparation,” Lowe said of the Glen Sather staff.

Lowe “couldn’t resist” mentioning that the ’94 Rangers imported seven ex-Oilers and ended a 54-year drought in the Cup.

“Maybe the Leafs should get us,” he joked about Toronto’s identical drought. He singled out Kurri for coming from Finland twice in a week to attend his banner raising in Edmonton and then Monday to be in the Meridian Hall crowd.

For the Chicago Blackhawks organization, which found itself under critical fire for its inaction to help Kyle Beach, speeches by Doug Wilson and Marian Hossa reminded people of the team’s best days. Wilson greeted everyone from his first roommate, Stan Mikita, to Keith Magnusson, Tony Esposito and announcer Pat Foley and hockey writer Bob Verdi.

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“Life can end, relationships can’t,” Wilson said of his three deceased companions. “Stan had a saying, ‘You make a living with what you get, you make a living with what you give.’ Keith would teach you that the best gift you can give someone is time. Tony’s love of life and work ethic … we miss them all. “

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, in his annual Hall address, offered the league’s “gratitude” to Beach for stepping up and pursuing his allegations of sexual assault by video coach Brad Aldrich. Bettman promised better in the future.

“The normal thing for Kyle and everyone else is to be vigilant,” he said.

Kim St-Pierre, the first female goalkeeper in the Hall, said she is proud to continue upward progress to “break the glass ceiling” in hockey. But in thanking his many fellow Olympians from team Canada, he also noted that the men he grew up with in the minor leagues in Chateauguay, Que., Also provided inspiration.

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Hossa was delighted to have a plaque to hang alongside fellow Slovakians Mikita and Peter Stastny. He also asked Nicklas Lidstrom to come from Sweden to incorporate him, despite the Red Wings not winning the Cup in Hossa’s year there.

“I went there to learn how to win,” he said, a tutelage that helped him in three titles with Chicago, for which he also recognized former coach Joel Quenneville.

Jarome Iginla acknowledged the skeptics who said he would not last in hockey, much less make it to the Hall of Fame.

“He was not your typical hockey kid. My father was from Nigeria, my mother from Oregon. People would say ‘what are your chances of being in the NHL? There aren’t many black players. ‘ And I heard other things (more hurtful). Fortunately, there were only a few. It was thanks to guys like Grant Fuhr, Tony McKegney, Willie O’Ree and Claude Vilgrain that it was possible. “

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Part of Iginla’s nature was her refusal to squeeze the sour grapes out of her two close moments with the biggest jackpots in hockey. In the closest Hart Trophy vote to date in 2002, he and Montreal goalkeeper Jose Theodore tied with 434 points. Iginla scored 52 goals, 11 more than anyone else, but Theodore’s impressive season earned him three more votes for first place as a tiebreaker.

Two years later, Calgary was one win away from eliminating Tampa Bay in the Cup final, but the Flames’ disallowed goal at the top of the line was canceled and instead of taking the lead in Game 6, they finally they lost the series. But the great sportsman Iginla refused to live in the past and was even introduced by Oilers rival Messier, who had done the same for Lowe.

Monday was also the long-delayed Hall induction night for two members of the media. Tony Gallagher of the province of Vancouver, previously named the winner of the 2020 Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award chosen by the Association of Professional Hockey Writers, while Rick Peckham, retired play-by-play voice of the Hartford Whalers and Tampa Bay Lightning, won the Foster Hewitt broadcasting award.