Hall of Famers Housley Pronger Lidstrom dominated in own way

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The 2015 Hockey Hall of Fame cla s will have its moment in the spotlight on Monday evening when players Angela Ruggiero, Sergei Fedorov, Chris Pronger, Nicklas Lidstrom and Phil Housley are inducted in Toronto.It's an incredible cla s that features just the fourth woman to ever be inducted into the Hall of Fame (Ruggiero, a star defensemen that won several medals, including an Olympic gold, for the US national team) and one of the most exciting two-way forwards in league history (Fedorov).But the highlight of the cla s is the trio of Lidstrom, Housley and Pronger, defensemen that built Hall of Fame careers and dominated the league in completely different ways.Chris Pronger dominated opponents and turned teams into Stanley Cup contendersChris Pronger was perhaps the most physically dominant defenseman that has ever played in the league. His mix of size, strength, skill, durability, and nastine s (OK, sometimes  Minnesota Twins Jersey he played a little dirty) made Pronger one of the most impactful players the NHL has ever seen.  He would not only routinely play between 25 and 30 minutes per night over a full season and playoffs, he would almost single handedly take over those games and give his team a chance to win a championship. The greatest example of his dominance and impact is the simple fact that outside of his first two or three years in the league, every team he went to became a Stanley Cup contender, no matter what they did before he arrived or how fell they fell after he left.Even though the Blues never reached a Stanley Cup Final during his time with the team, they were consistently one of the best teams in the NHL. After his time in St. Louis came to an end following the 2003-04 season (when Zach Duke Jersey  the Blues would go on to mi s the playoffs in five of the next six seasons after never mi sing them with Pronger), every team he went to not only reached a Stanley Cup Final, they did it .When he joined the for the 2005-06 season the team had mi sed the playoffs in two of the previous three seasons. Thanks in large part to Pronger's 30 minutes per night in the playoff,s the Oilers went on an improbable run to the Final where they lost in Game 7 to the . Pronger was traded after the season, the Oilers lost 24 points in the standings and haven't been back to the playoffs since.  The team he went to, Anaheim, already one of the better teams in the league at that point after a trip to the Conference Final the previous season, were put over the top by Pronger's addition to the lineup (alongside another Hall of Fame defenseman, Scott Niedermayer) and won the Cup in his first year with the team.Two years later, he was traded again, this time to the Philadelphia Flyers who would also make a run to the Final in Pronger's first year with the team with him once again playing 30 minutes per night. Following his career-ending concu sion in 2011-12 the Flyers were never the same team defensively.In the years since he was drafted and began making an impact in the NHL . It's a futile effort because there never going to be another one. When you have a player that can literally play half of every game and dominate it the way Pronger could both physically and at both ends of the ice, you're always going to have a chance to win.  And Pronger's teams always did.Nicklas Lidstrom was the perfect defensemanWhile Pronger's impact on the game was always noticeable because chaos had a way of following him around on the ice, Lidstrom was more of a technician that did well, but wasn't as easily noticeable.Good defensive play is hard to measure and identify, even for the people that are paid good money to do it in the NHL. When we look at defensemen we tend to only notice them when one of a small handful of things is happening on the ice: When they are delivering a big hit, when they are scoring a goal, or when they are making a glaring mistake that leads  Fernando Rodney Jersey to a goal against.Those are the plays that stand out and make us take notice of them. Two of them almost never happened when Lidstrom was on the ice.   Listed at 6-1, 192 pounds, he wasn't a physically imposing player (Pronger by comparison was 6-6, 220), and even though you wouldn't see him deliver many big hits or drop the gloves, nobody could get around him or beat him one-on-one.He didn't have the hardest shot in the NHL, but he always found a way to get it through traffic and put it on the net (and quite often, the net)He took chances offensively, but was never out of position defensively.He was a lock for 50 or 60 points every year from the blue line during an era where top-line struggled to hit that mark. Between 1995 and 2007 he topped 50 points 11 times in 12 years. The only two players that did it 12 times were Jaromir Jagr and Mats Sundin. during that stretch.  He was a defenseman that scored like a forward while  Taylor Rogers Jersey also being the best defensive player in the NHL, and because of that, he was the cornerstone piece of a franchise that won four Stanley Cups (and played in two other Stanley Cup Finals) during a 14-year stretch.Phil Housley had few peers with the puck on his stickAnd then there is Housley.While Pronger and Lidstrom dominated mostly due to their ability to goals, Housley, who was only listed at 5-11, 180 pounds, was a weapon thanks to his ability to them.And almost nobody that played the position was able to create goals the way Housley could during his 21-year career with the Buffalo Sabres, Calgary Flames, Chicago Blackhawks, Winnipeg Jets, Washington Capitals, New Jersey Devils, and Toronto Maple Leafs.  The numbers both overall, and in his best single seasons, jump off the page.His 1,232 points are fourth most in NHL history, behind only fellow Hall of Famers Ray Bourque, Paul Coffey and Al MacInnis. Before he was pa sed by Mike Modano in the late 2000s, no American-born player, forward or defensemen, had scored more points in the NHL than Housley. And even though he played in an era that was dominated by offense and big goal numbers, he still far exceeded all other  Max Kepler Jersey defenders during that time.He is one just eight defensemen in league history to record at least 90 points in a single season, and one of just seven to top 80 points at least three times. His impact was immediate in the NHL as an 18-year-old when the Buffalo Sabres put him directly into the NHL, straight out of high school (where he was originally a forward), and watched him put 66 points on the board, the seventh highest total for any 18-year-old in league history, and by far the most for an 18-year-old defenseman (Bobby Orr is second with 41 points in 61 games; Florida Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad is third with 39 points in 81 games).Housley had his flaws at times defensively and his play in his own zone was never really his strength, but there is a ton of value in having the ability to skate, move the puck and score from the blue line the way Housley could. When Housley played in the NHL there weren't many defensemen that were built like him or played like him. Today, having that same type of skillset is almost required to be a top defenseman in the NHL. Players like Housley paved the way for that to happen.
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