Hall of Fame Fan Forum: Fighting, pranks and great advice for young players

TORONTO – The Hockey Hall of Fame Fan Forum is one of my favorite events of induction weekend.

It’s held in the hall that houses the plaques of honored members as well as the Stanley Cup, and thus holds only about 250 fans. But for those who line up early and get inside, it’s a freewheeling hour of conversation with the new class that’s worth the wait.

Such was the case again with the Class of 2015’s players: Defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom and forward Sergei Fedorov, both of whom drew a large collection of Detroit Red Wings fans to Saturday afternoon’s forum; Chris Pronger, a Stanley Cup champion with the Anaheim Ducks; Phil Housley, smooth-skating point machine with the Winnipeg Jets and Buffalo Sabres; and Angela Ruggerio, U.S. women’s hockey great and Olympic gold medalist.

Again, what’s great about it is that the fans guide the conversation. No screening, no filtering – raise your hand, ask your question. Which leads to some unpredictable tangents amidst insightful questions.

A smattering of the queries on Saturday:

Advice To Young Players

Ruggerio had an interesting trick for young players to focus on their game.

“When I was nine, I got cut from a team, and I had the option to quit or keep going,” she said.

So she was given some advice. “Next time you’re on the ice, you have to pretend a fan in the stands is a scout that’s going to be evaluating you during the game. So I would pick someone out of the crowd and pretend they were holding a clipboard and evaluating me.”

Each game, she’d select a fan and then focus on them during the game, pretending she was under their scrutiny each time.

“And when I eventually got to that point where I should have been nervous, I wasn’t,” she said.

Cereal

Again, these things can get kind of irreverent, so Fedorov was asked if he had ever tried “Fedorov Crunch,” the breakfast cereal named in his honor.

“Yeah, I tried that cereal. But it was a long time ago.”

Concussions

One fan asked about concussions in the NHL. Pronger, whose career ended due to one and who now works for the League’s Department of Player Safety, said their numbers are declining. “It’s going to ebb and flow. The game has changed in the last few years since I’ve been gone,” he said.

He paused, sensing the irony.

“No correlation,” he said, with a laugh.

Pronger said the new rules will continue to decrease concussions in the NHL, but eliminating them is another issue.

“You’re still going to have incidents that occur. The game is fast,” he said, before adding that hits that target the head are in decline.

Fighting

Related to the concussion issue is the fighting issue. And the players were asked about fighting in the NHL and its future.

“As we’ve seen, fighting is going down in the last few years. Players have to be able to skate, have to be able to play. I don’t think they’re going to eliminate fighting, but I think it’s going to continue to go down,” said Lidstrom.

Housley, an assistant coach with the Nashville Predators, agreed. “It’s an 82-game schedule. You have to be able to play four lines. You appreciate the roles those guys play for the team,” he said. “Fighting is part of our game. The percentages have gone way down. But those guys have to be part of the team and play good minutes.”

Pronger said that staged fighting is basically dead but that the sport will always lead to the point where two players will drop the gloves.

“It gets so passionate, so intense.”

Pranks

Finally, the forum also included some hilarious reminiscing about which of their former teammates played the best pranks.

Lidstrom admitted that goalie Chris Osgood was the best prankster on the Detroit Red Wings, if only because he would never own up to the pranks he was obviously pulling.

Pronger chose Geoff Courtnall and Marc Bergevin from his St. Louis Blues days. “Although they would just prank each other,” he said. One such prank was when Bergevin actually hid inside Courtnall’s room closet for an hour, waiting for him to return, and then jumped out to scare him.

Ruggiero said her national team teammates would play a game in which they flung lumps of butter on each others’ shoes during breakfast, hoping to be undetected.

Goalie Clint Malarchuk was Housley’s choice, saying that the old “fishing line attached to the dollar bill” gag was his specialty. Although he did have another gag of note.

“He used to see people running through the airport, who were late for their plane. And he would run after some guy who was running to his plane and start screaming, ‘HEY THAT GUY’S GOT MY WALLET!’”

Now that’s committing to the bit.

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