The Hockey Hall of Fame will announce their 2025 nominees at 3 p.m. EST today all over social media. Sergei Gonchar could be one of the nominees to possibly make the Hall of Fame for 2025 and he is definitely deserving.
He has had quite the career. He played for the Washington Capitals, Boston Bruins, Pittsburgh Penguins, Ottawa Senators, Dallas Stars, and Montreal Canadiens. Gonchar won his only Stanley Cup with the Penguins in 2009 when they defeated the Detroit Red Wings in 7 games.
He put up 220 goals and 591 assists in 1301 career games and he was always known for his slapshot from the point, especially on the powerplay. There are a couple reasons why he should be nominated.
He was very instrumental to the Penguins Stanley Cup victory over the Red Wings
While Gonchar only put up 1 goal and 1 assist in those 7 games against the Red Wings, he put up 3 goals and 11 assists in 22 games in that 2009 playoff run.
He put up a monster goal in game 3 of the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals as it gave the Penguins a 3-2 lead and they never looked back as they cut the series deficit to 2-1.
This goal really helped the Penguins start to rally in this series as they also won game 4 and went back to Detroit for game 5 tied at 2 games a piece.
Gonchar was always defensively sound and could be relied on outside of Kris Letang
Every Penguins fan and hockey fan knew that Kris Letang was always going to be the number one defenseman and be relied upon the most.
But when the Penguins had Gonchar, especially in 2009, you knew you could rely on him as well to help out defensively and help out on the offensive side of the puck.
Gonchar was always a juggernaut on the powerplay, and opponents feared his killer slapshot whenever they saw it coming. They knew the puck was almost always going into the net as Gonchar would rip it from the point.
But Gonchar is super deserving of being in the Hall of Fame and only time will tell if he gets a nomination or if he has to wait a little longer.