It gives us all the feels in the sports world when a player retires after spending a long, accomplished career with a single franchise. That was the mood across social media Tuesday when Anaheim Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf, 36, announced he would retire when the 2021-22 scheduled concludes. With the Ducks set to miss the playoffs, that leaves just 11 games and four home dates before Getzlaf calls it a career.

He’ll hang ’em up as the Ducks’ longest-tenured captain and all-time leader in games, assists, points, playoff goals, playoff assists and playoff points. He belongs alongside Teemu Selanne, Paul Kariya, Corey Perry and Jean-Sebastian Gigure as the greatest players to spend the majority of their careers as Ducks. Getzlaf, of course, is the only one among them to play every game in an Anaheim jersey. If he plays in all 11 remaining games, he’ll finish with 1,161 to leapfrog Bob Gainey and Harry Howell for 30th on the NHL’s all-time leaderboard of games played with one franchise. Getzlaf is one of 46 players to record at least 1,000 points with a single franchise.

So let’s do what every good hockey fan does when a star player retires: fire up the Hall of Fame debate. What are Getzlaf’s chances? On the surface, he hits some obvious benchmarks. He’s eclipsed 1,000 points. He’s fifth among active players in career assists and has cracked the top 10 in seven seasons. He owns a Stanley Cup ring and two Olympic gold medals. He was the 2013-14 Hart Trophy runner-up and also has a sixth- and seventh-place finish to his name.

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Does that make him a first-ballot Hall of Famer? An eventual Hall of Famer? Or does he sit on the ‘Hall of Very Good’ fringe?

To draw a conclusion, I’ll compare Getzlaf’s career to similar players inside and outside the Hall as well as his contemporaries.

 

Getzlaf vs. current Hall of Famers

Getzlaf’s 731 assists place him 51st in NHL history, and he’s one of 56 players in the 700-assist club. Of the other 55 in the club, 40 are already Hall of Famers, while five others – Jaromir Jagr, Joe Thornton, Sidney Crosby, Henrik Sedin and Patrick Kane – can be confidently pencilled in as Hall of Famers despite not yet being eligible. That means 82 percent of the players in the 700-assist club are Hall worthy.

Getzlaf’s 1,013 points rank 88th all-time, and he’s one of 93 players in the 1,000-point club, which boasts 60 Hall of Famers so far. Add the shoo-ins – Jagr, Thornton, Alex Ovechkin, Crosby, Kane, Evgeni Malkin, Henrik Sedin, Daniel Sedin, Anze Kopitar ­ – and that’s 69 out of the other 92 1,000-point getters, or 75 percent.