During Hayley Wickenheiser’s childhood, no one could ever have envisioned the day when the only first ballot Hockey Hall of Fame inductee in a given year was a woman. Or that a member of the distaff gender would ever be a skills development coach for an NHL team.
Yet there was Wickenheiser – the only first-year-eligible Honoured Member in 2019 – gleefully delivering her acceptance speech on Monday night in Toronto among a group of fellow honourees: multiple Stanley Cup champions in Guy Carbonneau and Sergei Zubov, European pioneer Vaclav Nedomansky, and builders Jim Rutherford and Jerry York.