Chris Osgood belongs in the Hall of Fame and it isn't even up for debate. Often times, emotions can lead to strong feelings about athletes, and reputations can follow names for entire careers, but remove any preconceived notions for a moment and consider the career an NHL goaltender would have to have to achieve the following:

3x Stanley Cup Champion.

5x Stanley Cup Finals appearances (4 as a starter).

10th Goalie All-Time to reach 400 wins.

50 Career shutouts.

4th All-Time in win percentage.

4th All-Time in Playoff Shutouts.

8th All-Time in playoff wins.

8th All-Time in Playoff save percentage for goalies appearing in more than 100 postseason games.

1 of 15 NHL goalies to have scored a goal.

These aren't one-off statistics. These aren't the results of riding the coattails of great teams. These are the numbers a goalie needs to post for a team to go from good to great. Chris Osgood was the starting goalie on 4 Presidents Trophy winning teams, with 13 years between numbers 1 and 4 (only 1 TEAM has won the Presidents trophy more than 3 times). He won the Jennings Trophy for least goals allowed (as a team for the entire season) 2 times, 12 years apart.

He was the first goaltender since Terry Sawchuck to win Stanley Cups as a starting goalie more than 10 years apart. In the 2008 playoffs, Osgood won 9 games in a row, from game 5 of the first round, to game 5 of the third, and didn't allow a goal in the Finals until just over 2 minutes left in the first period of game 3.

Aside from being one of the most efficient goalies to ever play, and adjusting his playing style to survive in the NHL from 1993-2009, Osgood was always a class act.

Chris Osgood belongs in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and as long as he is denied his Jacket, the HOF can't be taken seriously as an authority on great hockey. It is a gross oversight, and a massive miscalculation on their part, one that demonstrates a bandwagon mentality driven only by flashy names and big star power, something that hockey is supposed to avoid. Model players in the NHL have always been honored regardless of how "sexy" their careers are. This is a sport that champions the "role player", and a league that is supposed to recognize those that come through for their teams when the cup is on the line, and no goalie has had less recognition with more success than Ozzy. Let's make this right.