Today is Hall of Fame announcement day and just like every sport’s Hall of Fame, such announcements come with a certain amount of intrigue. Specifically, you may have spent all day wondering, “Did the guy/gal from my favorite team, who is perhaps the most deserving HHOF candidate of all time, get in? Or did someone else, who merely had a career with several more trophies and a few hundred more points, get in ahead of him for reasons that are totally unfair?”

Well, have no fear. As the world’s most impartial hockey pundit, who has no biases of any kind, I will now tell you for sure whether every inductee in the Hockey Hall of Fame’s class of 2026 actually deserved it. No equivocating. Just “yes” or “no.” And then some reasons which are completely irrefutable.

A quick note before we begin: I am a “small hall” guy and as such I will frown at almost every candidate, but I also understand that once they started letting, like, Mark Recchi in, it was all over for guys like me. With that, let’s get to the latest inductees: