McDonald reminisces on 'coolest job in the world' ahead of final Hall of Fame induction ceremony

Lanny McDonald's 10-year term as Hockey Hall of Fame chairman will end in June 2025, with fellow Hall of Famer Mike Gartner stepping into the role. About to preside over his final induction class, McDonald reflects on his past nine years as the shrine's chairman, a remarkable period for the game and for himself.

It wasn't long into Lanny McDonald's tenure as chairman of the Hockey Hall of Fame that he took his title quite literally.

The decision by committee, as McDonald remembers it with a laugh, "was a game-changer."

The hockey world annually would assemble in the grand setting of Toronto's Brookfield Place, home of the shrine, for induction ceremonies. And for two-plus hours, the audience would squirm uncomfortably on narrow folding wood chairs.

"We said, 'We have to do something,'" said McDonald, who will officiate his final induction on Nov. 11, his 10-year term as chair ending next June. "Those chairs were taking away too much from the ceremony."

Mike Gartner, who will succeed McDonald as chairman of the Hall, remembers almost in jest, "that everyone was hoping the inductees would hurry up with their speeches so we could all stand up."

Hayley Wickenheiser receives her Class of 2019 ring from Hockey Hall of Fame chairman Lanny McDonald during a ceremony in the shrine's Esso Great Hall.

Not lost on McDonald was the fact that his selection committee chairman until a few years ago, former goaltender John Davidson, is a large man with aching knees and hips.

"We knew if we were going to keep J.D. on the committee, we'd better do something fast," he said, laughing again.

The relationship between Hall president Jeff Denomme and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment chairman Larry Tanenbaum quickly set the wheels in motion. In came more comfortable chairs, a move that Gartner jokes was, "the best call the Hall had made in decades."

The chairs of chairman Lanny McDonald might not be his defining moment with the Hall of Fame, but it's one of a great many things in which he has played a part since being appointed to the post March 25, 2015.

Class of 1992 players Bob Gainey (left), Marcel Dionne (center) and Lanny McDonald display their Hall of Fame rings on June 26, 1992.

Voted by the Hall's board to succeed the late Pat Quinn, who had died four months earlier, McDonald accepted the position with equal parts honor and awe.

"I'd be lying if I didn't say I was a little nervous," he said the day he was appointed. "But when you have a love for the game and you have a passion for the game and the people in the game, it'll be pretty easy. I look forward to the challenge. … It's a huge day, a huge responsibility, but I'm just proud to be a part of the team. I look around here, this is like home."

McDonald was elected to the Hall of Fame as a member of the Class of 1992, alongside players Woody Dumart, Marcel Dionne and Bob Gainey, and Frank Mathers, Keith Allen and Bob Johnson in the Builders category.

In 2015, by then a nine-year veteran of the selection committee, the folksy fan favorite proved to be a perfect choice to serve as chairman.

Lanny McDonald hugs the Stanley Cup following the Calgary Flames' championship win against the Montreal Canadiens at the Montreal Forum on May 25, 1989.

Hockey's greatest mustache was a 1989 Stanley Cup champion with the Calgary Flames, ending his 16-season career with a championship on Montreal Forum ice against the Canadiens.

McDonald scored an even 500 regular-season goals with 506 assists in 1,111 games with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Colorado Rockies and the Flames. He also had 84 points (44 goals, 40 assists) in 117 Stanley Cup Playoff games.

To this day, more than 35 years after his final NHL game, the 71-year-old native of Hanna, Alberta, is enormously popular worldwide, mixing as easily with captains of industry as with star-struck fans.

On his watch as chairman, the Hall of Fame has grown by 56 Honored Members, 41 players and 15 builders. That number likely will reach 60 with the Class of 2025, to be selected next June, just days before his term ends.

Lanny McDonald's Hockey Hall of Fame ring.

"Go back through that list of 56 people and it's amazing," McDonald said, taking a rare moment to reflect during a life that forever is looking ahead. "On the women's side [since 2010], we now have [12] players and we're working diligently to expand that.

"It's been fabulous to induct some of the people we've had the opportunity to put in the Hall, players you'd expect, others who may have been missed over the years, and builders of the game. It's absolutely fantastic and we're very proud of it."

McDonald's decade in office has been a remarkable time in hockey, and in his own life.

During his tenure, he oversaw the Stanley Cup's 125th anniversary celebrations in 2017, was deeply involved in the NHL centennial season that year, and in June 2018 was front and center as the Hall of Fame marked the 75th anniversary of its founding and its 25th year at Brookfield Place, its current home.

In 2022, McDonald's body of work was recognized when he was awarded the Order of Hockey in Canada.

Lanny McDonald tries to slow the Edmonton Oilers' Wayne Gretzky during Game 6 of the 1986 Smythe Division Final at Calgary's Olympic Saddledome.

There were difficult moments too.

The coronavirus pandemic twice closed the shrine to the public and even cancelled the Class of 2021 election, the previous year's inductees honored in 2021 when COVID-19 had made a 2020 celebration impossible.

He and the Hall's board of directors, selection committee and full-time staff learned to do business on Zoom calls, an unpopular but necessary option for a man who truly loves mingling with people.

And McDonald had his own dramatic health crisis, felled by a near-fatal heart attack in February 2024 in the Calgary airport moments after having arrived home with his wife, Ardell, from the 2024 NHL All-Star Weekend in Toronto.

Recovered fully, he's eager to take part in all nine Hall of Fame weekend events and step behind the bench to coach Team Lindros in the Nov. 10 Hyundai Hockey Hall of Fame Legends Classic at Scotiabank Arena, with the face-off following his presentation of jackets to the Class of 2024.

Darryl Sittler (right) interviews teammate Lanny McDonald of the Original Six Legends during the 2004 Hockey Hall of Fame Legends Classic at Toronto's Air Canada Centre.

"We're going to kick some butt," he predicted of the Legends Classic.

Before that, McDonald will be delighted to serve one last time as the Stanley Cup's chaperone around Toronto to various Hall of Fame weekend cocktails and parties, hockey's silver chalice a superstar wherever it goes.

"Some people know about it, some have no idea that it's coming," he said. "To be able to surprise people and their guests, hanging out with the Cup for an hour then moving on to the next party … that is very special."

McDonald says he'll miss making the late June phone calls from the Hall's Founders Room to newly elected members, having made those calls first with Davidson, then upon the latter's retirement with Gartner, who succeeded him Jan. 1, 2022. A new selection committee chairman will be installed with Gartner's term complete and him taking McDonald's role.

"Those calls are absolutely favorite times," he said. "You know what Santa feels like when he brings that gift. Some people pretty much know the call is coming but are still surprised, while others are completely caught off guard. Look at the guys over the last nine years who have got that call who have waited for many years.

Lanny McDonald prepares to clear the puck from behind the Calgary Flames net during Game 2 of the 1989 Stanley Cup Final in Calgary. Montreal's Stephane Richer and Calgary's Al MacInnis give chase.

"I'll miss that, and the people at the Hall. There are only 34 full-time staff and I've got to know them all personally. Every man and woman loves what they do, and of being a part of something so special that is so different from everything else."

On Nov. 8, McDonald will preside over his final ring presentation in Esso Great Hall, his own 1992 induction plaque at the extreme bottom right of six rows at the front of the room, each row featuring nine individuals.

During Induction Weekend in 2018, he stood at the back of the Great Hall and took in the spectacular view.

Ten, maybe 15 times a year, McDonald would preside over a special event, either at the shrine or elsewhere in the city.

And when his night's work was done, he would quietly find his way to this stately room where the Stanley Cup and other historic trophies are displayed among the plaques celebrating every member of the Hall of Fame enshrined since 1945.

Lanny McDonald in 1981 with the Colorado Rockies (left), and during the 1970s with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

"I'll just come into this room and walk around and reflect on some of the names," he said. "I think I have the coolest job in the world. If you love the game and the history of it, it's so cool to be chairman of the Hockey Hall of Fame."

He remembered a magical night at a 75th/25th anniversary evening that spring, late icons Ted Lindsay and Red Kelly holding court.

"The party was supposed to be from 6-11 p.m., for just Hall of Famers and their wives or significant others," McDonald recalled. "We extended the bar until 1 o'clock. Maybe 10 or 12 players were left at midnight, and Red and Ted, a month before their 91st and 93rd birthdays, were still there."

Those memories are burned into McDonald forever, among countless events and people that have defined his time as the shrine's chairman.

"It really is all about the people who you meet along the way," he said. "That they love the game as much as I do had made it so much easier as a family to accomplish what we have the past nine years."

Top photo: Lanny McDonald speaks prior to the Hockey Hall of Fame Class of 2023 jacket presentation at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena.