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.

It is a sad day for wrestling fans as it is was announced today that former WWF World Tag Team Champion and WWE Hall of Famer, Nikolai Volkoff passed away today. He was 70 years old.

Volkoff was born Josip Peruzovic in the former Yugoslavia was competitive weightlifter in his youth. In a competition in Austria he would leave his home behind and emigrate to Canada (later the United States) where he would learn professional wrestling under the legendary Stu Hart. Along with Newton Tattrie (who introduced him to Hart) he would become Bepo, one half of the Mongols, and would win tag team gold in the WWWF in 1970. After leaving the organization he would adopt the persona of an evil Russian under the name he would use for the rest of his career, Nikolai Volkoff.

Volkoff worked across the United States but always seemed to find his way back to New York. He would have a run against World Champion Bruno Sammartino in 1974 and again later in the decade would challenge Bob Backlund for the World Title. His return in 1984 would lead to the most recognized run of his career, where he teamed with The Iron Sheik and became World Tag Team Champions and one of the top heels in the company. Volkoff appeared at the first four Wrestlemanias and again at Wrestlemania 6, where shortly after he turned on his then partner Boris Zhukov and became a liberated Lithuanian who was now anti-Russia and for the first time in his career he was a babyface.

His last main run saw him as a lackey for Ted DiBiase’s Million Dollar Corporation under the gimmick that he needed the money after being down on his luck. He would make sporadic appearances after for the WWE and other independent promotions.

Volkoff would be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005.

It is believed that complications from a heart attack months earlier led to his death.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to extend our condolences to the friends, family and fans of Nikolai Volkoff.

Somehow we fell like having a moment of silence so we can play the Soviet National anthem.