By: Eric Duhatschek, Hailey Salvian, Max Bultman and Lukas Weese

On Tuesday, the Hockey Hall of Fame revealed the newest members that will be enshrined among the sport’s legends. Pavel Datsyuk, Shea Weber, Jeremy Roenick, Krissy Wendell-Pohl, Natalie Darwitz, Colin Campbell and David Poile make up the 2024 class to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame this November.

Of the seven names, five were players and two were builders. It is the first time since 2010 that two women are being inducted into the same Hockey Hall of Fame class.

Datsyuk played 14 NHL seasons, all with the Detroit Red Wings. During his career, he recorded 314 goals and 604 assists. Nicknamed the “Magic Man,” Datsyuk will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Shea Weber played 16 years in the NHL, 11 with the Nashville Predators and five with the Montreal Canadiens. Playing 1,038 career games, Weber tallied 224 goals and 365 assists. Weber, a two-time first-team All-Star, won two Olympic gold medals with Team Canada in 2010 and 2014 along with world championship gold in 2007.

Jeremy Roenick played for 20 seasons in the NHL and was a member of five different teams. Drafted No. 8 in 1988, Roenick began his career with the Chicago Blackhawks (1988 to 1996), before…

Connor Bedard wasn’t nervous when he pulled on a Team Canada sweater and stepped onto the ice at the World Junior championships, the weight of a hockey-mad country’s expectations resting squarely on his shoulders. He wasn’t nervous when NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly kept flipping over placards with NHL team logos on them after the draft lottery, Bedard’s fate and his future resting face-down at the bottom of the pile. Honestly, he wasn’t even all that nervous the first time he donned a Chicago Blackhawks jersey in a real game and settled in at the opening faceoff dot against his idol, Pittsburgh Penguins megastar Sidney Crosby.

Hockey’s familiar. Hockey’s comfortable. Connor Bedard knows hockey.

But standing in the entryway of Nick Foligno’s house in Chicago on a September evening, fidgeting and shuffling and making meager attempts at small talk with Nick and his wife, Janelle, who had invited the new guy over for a nice family dinner?

Yeah, Bedard was nervous.

“I don’t think (it’s) intimidating,” Bedard said of his first forays into the world of grown-ups. “I didn’t know anyone, so you’re kind of nervous about that. Just how I’m going to fit in and stuff.”

The way Foligno remembers it, Bedard quickly started talking about hockey and seemed…

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Ryan Donato knows better than anybody not to get too attached to any city. Not when you’re a professional athlete. The Blackhawks are Donato’s fifth NHL team in seven seasons, and he’s made two AHL stops along the way as well.

But he can’t help it. Chicago just feels like home right now. He and his wife already have their share of favorite restaurants, and their golden retriever, Moose, is loving the city, too — even though he has yet to take advantage of one of the city’s greatest charms, its wide variety of dog-friendly establishments.

“I should,” Donato said with a smile. “But he’s 90 pounds. He’s a big one. I wish I could take him everywhere with me, though. On the road, even.”

On the ice with the Blackhawks, however, Donato’s been as transient as ever. He started on the top line, dropped down to the fourth, moved back up to the top, then back down to the fourth. With so many injuries up and down the lineup — add Anthony Beauvillier to the list after he suffered a left arm injury in a 3-0 loss to the Predators on Tuesday — there have been few constants among the lines, and Donato’s been moved more than most.

Donato shrugs it off, but of course, like every player, he wants to play as much as possible.

“I prepare the same…

SAN JOSE, Calif. — David Gust had decided this summer he was moving on from hockey.

He was 28 years old. He had put together a fine pro career, including signing an NHL contract with the Carolina Hurricanes during the pandemic season, but it seemed as if he had reached his ceiling. He was a really good AHL player. As respectable as that was, he didn’t foresee another NHL contract coming and he sought more stability in his life.

“Just with, I’m 29 years old (his birthday was Feb. 21), my wife’s pregnant and all that, so it was kind of if there was no NHL deal and all that, maybe just start the next chapter of my life,” Gust said.

His father, Dave, recalled, “He was done. He was going to come to the rink, be a hockey director, run youth hockey at the rink.”

Gust was then convinced otherwise. The Blackhawks, the team he had grown up watching in the Chicago suburb of Orland Park, Ill., sought to bolster their AHL affiliate, the Rockford IceHogs, and Gust fit what they were looking for. IceHogs coach Anders Sorensen reached out to Gust and Gust bought in. He signed an AHL contract for the season.

Gust could never have imagined what this season would bring.

Gust first put together his best AHL season to date. He was named an AHL all-star and produced 24 goals, 26 assists…

What do you picture when you think of Bobby Hull? 

Do you see him with the Stanley Cup in his hands, the one he won in 1961? Do you envision him with that famous banana-blade stick in his hands, the one he helped popularize, maybe even invent, alongside longtime Blackhawks teammate Stan Mikita? Or do you see him with a steel-heeled women’s shoe in his hands, the one that he allegedly used to beat his then-wife Joanne over the head, leaving her “covered with blood” and believing “this is the end,” as she told ESPN in a 2002 documentary?

What do you think of when you think of Bobby Hull?

Do you think about the team-record 604 goals he scored, so many of them with that cannonading slap shot? Do you think about the way he changed the game forever — eventually expanding the NHL and opening the door for more lucrative player contracts — by jumping to the upstart WHA in 1972? Or do you think about the time in 1997 when the Moscow Times quoted him as saying Adolf Hitler “had some good ideas” but “just went a little bit too far,” and that the population of Black people was growing too quickly in the United States, comments he later denied ever making?

Now how do you memorialize Bobby Hull?

Does the NHL hold a moment of silence before Saturday’s All-Star Game? Do…