ELECTIONS: 1945

The first election brought its first controversy: Chair Morey Holzman refused to put Lester and Frank Patrick on the ballot because he determined they should automatically qualify as Builders for the first ballot included with Builders.

"Of the many, this may have been my biggest mistake," Holzman said. "I effectively took two votes out of everybody's hands by saying that the Patricks were automatic. We had 23 Oldtimers on the initial ballot who are enshrined in Toronto. I was trying to give everyone two extra votes, and I shouldn't have done that. Two people voted for Frank Patrick anyway."

Because we decided we wanted to induct a large initial class, we chose the top five vote getters in both the Oldtimers and Honoured Members categories, regardless of vote totals.

On the initial ballot, we had three players tied with seven votes apiece, so we inducted all three.

The initial class for 1945:

HONOURED MEMBERS:

Here is how the final voting went:

* - Patrick was declared ineligible, but two committee members voted for him anyway.

"We fell into the same trap that the actual Hall of Fame did," said Iain Fyffe. "Hobey Baker's tragic death and word-of-mouth quality (he never played high-level competition) got him inducted. What a player accomplished as a player should determine his worthiness as a Hall-of-Famer; Baker accomplished little."