The greatest unsolved mystery in the game remains: How is it that Alexander Mogilny is not in the Hockey Hall of Fame?
How is that even possible, 18 years after he played the last of his 1,114 regular-season and playoff games in the National Hockey League?
“He was an inordinate talent,” said Rick Dudley, his first NHL coach in Buffalo, where the Mogilny story, of the hockey pioneer who changed his sport, had a career few will ever match.
“I think he’s right there with Patty LaFontaine and Gilbert Perreault as the greatest players I either coached or played with,” said Dudley. “Alex is in the mix with any of them.
“The first thing you realized when you saw Alex was his skating was off the charts. You have to look at Connor McDavid or Nathan MacKinnon to find a comparable for him today. We had Perreault when I was in Buffalo. I believe Alex was a notch better as a skater.
“He had wonderful hands and a great shot. He could beat you any way he wanted to. If you’re asking why isn’t Alex in the Hall, I’m not criticizing the people who make those choices. But there’s no doubt, to me, he had a Hall of Fame career.”
Mogilny played 990 regular season games for Buffalo, Vancouver, New Jersey and Toronto. He led the Sabres in scoring once and twice finished second to LaFontaine and Dale Hawerchuk, both of whom are in the Hall of Fame.
He led the Canucks in scoring twice, playing with Pavel Bure, who is in the Hall.
He led the Maple Leafs in scoring once — the only season in 13 in which Mats Sundin didn’t finish first with the Leafs. Sundin is in the Hall. He calls Mogilny the best player he ever played with.
Mogilny won his only Stanley Cup in New Jersey in 2000 after being acquired at the trade deadline.
“I don’t think we win the Cup if it wasn’t for him,” said Lou Lamoriello, the Hall of Fame general manager then with the Devils.
“As for why Mogilny isn’t in there, knowing the player he was, knowing what he did, how he came over here, all the success he had, as far as I’m concerned, he is most deserving of being in the Hall of Fame. Without question. I don’t even have a second thought on that.
“In my opinion, his credentials are up there with anyone in the Hall, I can speak first-hand on that. He had as good a shot as there was in hockey. His skating was elite. He was an overall player you could trust defensively in any situation. I don’t know what more you would want from a player than that?”
Who can answer for Mogilny not being in the Hall? The sad truth is, nobody can. There are 18 Hall of Fame voters each year — the voters change on occasion — and to be elected, you need 14 votes, or 77.7% of the total.
Because the voting is done behind closed doors and there is no public record of any of it, there is no way to know (a) how many times Mogilny has been nominated for the Hall; (b) how many times his career has been debated or discussed in the committee room; (c) whether he’s been snubbed by not being nominated often enough or snubbed by not receiving the appropriate percentage of votes to be elected.
The Hall of Fame has no plans to change its lack of transparency. I reached out to a number of Hall of Fame voters from the past to ask about Mogilny’s candidacy. None of them would answer a question. All of them are sworn to secrecy.
THE CASE FOR MOGILNY
What makes Mogilny a Hall of Famer? In his case, it’s more than merely numbers and the eye test. It’s his story as the first defector from the Soviet Union, leaving home at the age of 20 for Buffalo, possibly leaving home forever, to set the tone for others who would follow.
The next year, Sergei Fedorov defected to play for the Detroit Red Wings. He’s in the Hall of Fame. The year after that, Bure left for the Vancouver Canucks. He’s in the Hall of Fame.
Somehow, they got elected. Somehow, the one who paved the way for their departures did not.
“Not enough has been made of the structure and contribution he made to the game on a macro level,” said Gerry Meehan who, as general manager of the Sabres, was among those who orchestrated Mogilny’s escape from the U.S.S.R. “Think of the number of players who came to the NHL after what we did. They’re here because of the path Alex set. This all started with him and with our organization.
“He was a magical hockey player, but he was more than that. Rarely does a talent have that combination of speed and skill and brains in a player. That sets him apart. His story sets him apart. His resume sets him apart.”
There is an uneven characteristic to Mogilny’s NHL career that some critics wonder may have cost him election. He scored the breathtaking total of 76 goals with Buffalo in 1993, but only had more than 50 goals in one other season. He had just two 100-point seasons, but scored at an impressive 1.04 points per game in his career. He missed more than 300 games to injury in his career. That’s just about the only number that seems a hindrance, but others like Cam Neely and Bure missed more games along the way. For every criticism one can aim at Mogilny’s career, there is a Hall of Fame player elected with similar difficulties.
HE’S A WINNER
Mogilny also did something many Hall of Famers haven’t accomplished: He won.
He won Olympic gold in Calgary in 1988, and won gold in one of the three world junior tournaments he starred in, scoring 18 goals in 20 tournament games. He won the Stanley Cup with New Jersey in 2000. He’s done more than his share of winning.
“I played with a lot of Hall of Fame players,” said LaFontaine, who had 95 assists centring Mogilny and Dave Andreychuk with the Sabres in 1993. “Andreychuk got traded to Toronto (for Grant Fuhr) late in that season. If he had stayed, we would have had the first line in NHL history with all three players scoring 50 goals. That will never happen again.”
LaFontaine played with Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy, Denis Potvin and Clark Gillies with the Islanders, with Dale Hawerchuk and Andreychuk in Buffalo, with Wayne Gretzky and Brian Leetch with the New York Rangers, all of them in the Hall.
“They were all talented in their own way,” said LaFontaine. “Alex was the most talented guy I ever played with. He was the rare player whose hands could keep up to his feet. Most can’t do that.
“I remember having a meeting with him years ago. I told him with the speed he has between the blue lines, I’ve never seen anyone faster, and, ‘With the way you shoot the puck, if you cut like that, I’ll get you the puck, and you’ll score 50 goals.’ When he heard this, his eyes lit up. You could see that 50 goals meant something to him.
“I then turned to the trainer and said, ‘If he does that, I’ll bet he’ll score 70 goals.’ The trainer gave me one of those looks like he didn’t believe what I was talking about.”
That year he scored 76 goals.
No one in the NHL has scored more than 70 goals in a season since then.
That year, he tied Teemu Selanne for most goals. Selanne, with 11 more career points than Mogilny’s 1,032, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2017.
There was even the belief of some — without any inside knowledge — that perhaps the war in Ukraine prevented Mogilny from Hall of Fame election. But, next month, Pavel Datsyuk will be inducted, so there is clearly no Russian boycott of Hall inductees.
Mogilny played with 15 Hall of Fame players in his career. Some, like Mark Messier, Scott Niedermayer, Martin Brodeur and Dominik Hasek, were absolute no-brainer selections. And some, like Pierre Turgeon, Andreychuk and Phil Housley, were not such obvious choices. But each case is individual — about that player, their accomplishments and their game.
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Some selections of recent years — like those of Guy Carbonneau or Kevin Lowe — are worthy of debate. No one would call Carbonneau or Lowe the greatest talents they ever played with the way Mogilny is often described. They were players not measured by numbers.
“Alex’s gift was obvious,” said Bill Watters, former assistant general manager to Pat Quinn with the Maple Leafs. “Pat loved Alex.
“When I think about it, I’m not surprised he’s not in the Hall of Fame. I’m actually rather shocked by it.
“You can go up and down the list of those in the Hall and there aren’t many who are better. I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors and I don’t suspect there’s any wrongdoing here. I just don’t understand it. He’s so much better than many who are already in that I can’t make sense of it.”
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