As most of the regular visitors to Notinhalloffame.com are aware we are (very) slowly putting together our top 50 players of every franchise in the “Big 4” of North American sports. After that is completed we will take a look at how each organization honors their past players and executives.

As such, it is important to us that the Arizona Coyotes have announced that they will be retiring the number 19 of Shane Doan, which will make it the first time in team history where this has occurred. This will take place on February 24 during their home game against the Winnipeg Jets.

Drafted 7th overall by the original Winnipeg Jets, Doan played his first hockey game in 1995 and his final one in 2017 for the Arizona Coyotes. He would play all 1,540 of his games in the National Hockey League for the same franchise and is without question the greatest player the team ever had since they relocated to Arizona.

Doan would represent the Coyotes in two All Star Games and he scored 972 Points while holding virtually every scoring record for the organization.

While Doan’s number is the first to be retired the team has “honored numbers” from the team’s history, which include Bobby Hull, Dale Hawerchuk, Thomas Steen, Keith Tkachuk, Jeremy Roenick and Teppo Numminen.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to congratulate Shane Doan for earning this prestigious honor.

As most of the regular visitors to Notinhalloffame.com are aware we are (very) slowly putting together our top 50 players of every franchise in the “Big 4” of North American sports. After that is completed we will take a look at how each organization honors their past players and executives.

As such, it is important to us that the Boston Bruins have announced that they will retire the number 16 of Rick Middleton on November 29 during their home game against the New York Islanders.

Middleton is the 11th player in the history of the Boston Bruins to have his jersey retired. He joins Lionel Hitchman, Aubrey Clapper, Eddie Shore, Milt Schmidt, Bobby Orr, John Bucyk, Phil Esposito, Ray Bourque, Terry O’Reilly and Cam Neely.

After playing his first two seasons with the New York Rangers, “Nifty” was traded to Boston where he instantly became a fan favorite. He would play twelve seasons in Boston where he was Point per Game player scoring 898 Points in 881 Games Played. Five times he was a forty Goal scorer, including the 1981-82 season where he put the puck in the net 51 times. That season he was a Second Team All Star and was named a Lady Byng Trophy winner. He was also a three time All Star.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to congratulate Rick Middleton for earning this prestigious honor.

We have a major retirement to talk about in Hockey as Jarome Iginla has announced that he is retiring from the game after a very successful 20 year career.

After a very successful career in Junior Hockey where he was a two time Memorial Cup Champion with the Kamloops Blazers he joined the Calgary Flames where he was the 11th Draft Pick in 1995. Iginla made an instant impact for the Flames where he was the runner-up for the Calder Trophy and a few years later his offense exploded to where he was considered an elite player in the NHL.

In the 2001-02 season Iginla was the NHL’s leading scorer, while also leading the league in Goals. He would be name a First Team All Star and while he was the runner-up for the Hart Trophy, he did win the Lester B. Pearson Award, which is the MVP as awarded by the players of the National Hockey League. Two years later, Iginila would become the Flames Captain, which historically speaking made him the first black Captain in the NHL history. That season, Iginla took Calgary to the Stanley Cup Finals, though they would go down to defeat to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Iginla would never see the Stanley Cup Finals again but he was still an elite player. In addition to the 2001-02 season where he was first a First Team All Star, he would receive that accolade two more times (2007-08 & 2008-09). He was also a Second Team All Star in the 2003-04 Season. Iginla would later play for Pittsburgh, Boston, Colorado and Los Angeles.

While he never won a Stanley Cup, Iginla was a major force on the International scene where he was a two time Olympic Gold Medalist twice (2002 & 2010) and the World Cup (2004).

Iginla retires with an even 1,300 Points and is the leading score all-time in Flames history.

In our eyes and many others, Iginla is likely to enter the Hockey Hall of Fame on the first ballot and he is likely to be ranked number one on our Notinhalloffame.com list.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to wish Jarome Iginla the best in his post-playing career.

Following the news of the death of Nikolai Volkoff and Brickhouse Brown, another wrestling death has been confirmed. Brian Christopher died at the age of 46 following a suicide attempt where he hung himself in jail. Christopher was arrested weeks earlier for a DUI and evading the police.

The son of WWE Hall of Famer and bona fide wrestling legend Jerry “The King” Lawler, Brian Lawler adopted the professional name of Brian Christopher and performed for his dad’s USWA promotion for years. It was never acknowledged on USWA television that they were father and son and Christopher would be become one of the top acts in the promotion winning numerous championships in Memphis.

Christopher would debut in the then named WWF where he competed in the Light Heavyweight Division. While they never came out and said it, they did tongue and cheek acknowledge the relationship between Lawler and Christopher, as the latter would often accompany his son in matches. Christopher would team up with Scott Taylor to form “Too Much” but it was a mid-card tag team at best that did not connect with the fans. They would be repackaged as a pair of white rappers now rechristened as “Grandmaster Sexay” and “Scotty 2 Hotty” and along with an alliance with Rikishi, who himself was undergoing another repackaging (last seen as the Sultan) would become a very popular trio.

For all three wrestlers, this was the height of their popularity and for the first time in his WWE career he would see himself appear on main events. Christopher and Taylor would win the WWF World Tag Team Titles and they would remain popular until Rikishi turned on them and they were moved down the card permanently. An injury to Taylor would see Christopher team up with Steve Blackman for a brief time but he would be released from the company when he was trying to bring drugs to Canada across the border.

Christopher would ply his trade in independents the next few years most notably for TNA but he would return to the WWE in 2004, though he would only last a month before being released again. He would work on the indies thereafter though would return on an episode of Raw on 2011 (regarding the Lawler-Michael Cole angle) and would also reunite with Taylor in a surprise Tag Team Title shot against the Ascension on NXT Takeover in 2014.

While Brian Christopher did have success throughout his career, issues with drug abuse haunted him throughout and prevented him from reaching his full potential. Sadly, it was that dependency that killed him in the end.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to extend our condolences to the friends, family and fans of Brian Christopher at this time.