Alexander Mogilny's Hall of Fame Evolution
From defector to scorer, underachiever to champion to snub, Mogilny’s path to the Hall of Fame wasn’t a straight line.
New Hockey Hall of Famer Alexander Mogilny’s long-overdue selection — announced this week after 17 years of eligibility — seemed for the longest time like it might never happen. Mogilny always had the talent of an inductee, of course; that much was apparent from the very beginning. (He scored in his very first NHL game, 20 seconds into his first shift, at age 20.) But throughout his career, Mogilny always had to skate away from the perceptions other people had about him. Some thought he was soft, others called him a selfish mystery man. Nearly everyone misunderstood what he really was: Adaptable.
Mogilny’s ability to evolve and survive shouldn’t have been a surprise, though, given his trailblazing NHL start. He was the first Soviet player drafted by an NHL team to defect and play in North America, following a harrowing escape from the 1989 World Championships in Sweden. With the help of Sabres executives Don Luce and Gerry Meehan — as KGB agents were reportedly in pursuit — Mogilny changed hotels every few hours, used aliases and eventually secured passage to the U.S., despite knowing he might never see his family again as a result. (Technically, he was an officer in the Red Army — making him a deserter in addition to a defector.)
"He was concerned for his family,” Luce would later recall, “but he knew he had to do something and he wanted to do it."
Upon landing in New York, Mogilny applied for political asylum and joined the Buffalo Sabres, who’d taken him with the No. 89 pick (his future jersey number) in the 1988 draft. Six months later, the Berlin Wall came down, right as Mogilny was playing his first handful of NHL games.
Mogilny’s rookie campaign was about learning the North American game, but by his second season he scored 30 goals — sandwiching him between future HOFers Sergei Fedorov and Mike Modano on the list of 21-year-old goal-scorers that year — and he continued to improve and impress with his speed, creativity and talent. In Year 3, he was up to 39 goals — and then, his signature season arrived at a signature moment for the sport.
The 1992-93 campaign has been called one of (if not the) greatest in hockey history, as well as the “last good year” before Gary Bettman arrived and either ruined or modernized the NHL (depending on your perspective). Mario Lemieux beat cancer and won MVP in unforgettable fashion, while Wayne Gretzky went to his last Stanley Cup Final. The league averaged over 3.5 goals per-team per-game for the last time, with a record 14 players recording 50+ goals and five breaking 60. And at the top of that list was none other than a 23-year-old Mogilny, who joined Teemu Selanne as just the fifth and sixth players ever to light the lamp 75 times (!) in a season — something nobody has done since.1
After that, Mogilny would forever be viewed as a different class of talent than merely good (or even great) goal-scorers. He had arrived as a bona fide superstar — though with that status came new expectations, ones he would spend the rest of his career trying to stay ahead of.
Any 76-goal season is always going to be tough act to follow, and the sequel to Mogilny’s saw him limited to 32 goals while recovering from the broken right leg he suffered during the ‘93 playoffs. It was part of a pattern by which Mogilny had missed an average of 16 games per year outside of that magical ‘92-93 season, and it got him pegged with the dreaded “injury-prone” label. In turn, that reputation — combined with Mogilny’s enigmatic personality, as well as stereotypes about Russian players in general — fed into a broader narrative that he lacked the drive or toughness to match his skill.
So when the Sabres’ salary situation was starting to hit a crunch coming out of the ‘94-95 lockout, the team felt Mogilny was expendable, despite his dazzling talent and 76-goal pedigree. At the 1995 draft, they shipped him to Vancouver for a package retrospectively headlined by Michael Peca.
Mogilny’s tenure with the Canucks did little to reshape the perception around his career. Yes, he started strong, with 55 goals and 107 points in 1995–96, and the Canucks looked poised for big things once countryman Pavel Bure returned to health — especially after also adding legendary former Oilers and Rangers C Mark Messier in the summer of ’97. But Mogilny’s durability and performance fell with each successive season in Vancouver,2 plunging him deeper into a reputation for laziness and fragility. Here’s what The Hockey Scouting Report ‘98-99 had to say about him:
“Mogilny’s biggest problems continue to be his inconsistency and motivation. He has so many wondrous skills, but most of the time just doesn’t seem interested. What a waste…
Mogilny doesn’t work as hard as he should, and there always seems to be something left in the tank... There are nights when he is invisible on the ice, and that is unpardonable for a player of his ability and importance…
Mogilny is not well-liked by his teammates and, like Pavel Bure, wants out. But Mogilny’s reputation precedes him; he will be tough to deal.”
(Jeez, tell us how you really feel, Sherry Ross!)
Based on all of this, it would seem unlikely that a Cup-contending team built around discipline and defensive systems would have any interest whatsoever in a player known for coasting on his talent, not working hard, getting hurt all the time and generally underachieving. But New Jersey Devils GM Lou Lamoriello saw it differently. He knew New Jersey needed more scoring punch up front, and at the 2000 trade deadline, he took a calculated risk.
It turned out to be one of the sharpest moves of Lamoriello’s dynasty-defining run in New Jersey. Instead of making waves and hurting the team’s vibe, Mogilny fit well within a more subdued role as a second-line winger, with 4 goals, 7 points and a +1 rating while playing all 23 games for the Devils in the 2000 playoffs, logging 16 minutes per contest. Notching a goal and an assist (with a +2 rating) in the Final, he helped New Jersey beat Modano and the defending-champion Dallas Stars to win the Stanley Cup. Not bad for a player who had been tagged as a moody, me-first loser at earlier stops in his career.
The self-described “hired gun” continued making the most of his situation in 2000-01, playing just 16.9 minutes a night but still managing to score 43 goals (his most since ‘95-96) with 83 points and a +10 rating, helping New Jersey lead the league in both goals per game and power-play percentage. Along with Patrik Elias, Petr Sykora, Jason Arnott, Sergei Brylin and Scott Gomez, Mogilny added to an amount of offensive firepower the Devils hadn’t possessed earlier in their time as a perennial contender.
“He brings us an element that this team hasn't had in the past,” defenseman Ken Daneyko said of Mogilny during the 2001 playoffs. “We needed a guy like Alex. He’s certainly the most gifted player I’ve ever played with. By a mile.”
Mogilny would add 5 goals and 16 points (with a +3 rating) in 25 playoff games as New Jersey came up just short of another Cup against an all-time Colorado Avalanche squad in Game 7 of the 2001 Final. Few had expected a player of Mogilny’s ill repute to be willing — much less able — to accept a lesser role on a contender, and still be able to stay in the lineup and produce while helping the team win. Mogilny proved the doubters emphatically wrong.
“It's worked out perfectly the way [Mogilny]’s responded,” said Lamoriello in 2001. “He’s put aside any personal thoughts and been a very unselfish team player. I can’t say enough about him. I don’t want to say it’s surprised me, but what he has brought to the team is what I thought he could, plus more.”
With free-agency beckoning that summer, Mogilny had one last act left in him. He joined the Toronto Maple Leafs (who’d just lost to the Devils in the ‘01 playoffs) on a 4-year, $22 million contract — and immediately provided them with an offensive boost as well.
In the first two seasons of that deal, Mogilny averaged 28.5 goals and 68 points, helping to transform the Leafs’ attack. Toronto jumped from 14th in goals per game before his arrival (2000–01) to third and eighth in 2001–02 and 2002–03, respectively. While the Leafs also added Robert Reichel, Mikael Renberg and others, Mogilny was the biggest difference-maker, ranking second only to captain Mats Sundin in scoring over that span.
In the 2002 playoffs, Mogilny maintained his unlikely transformation into a money performer as well, leading Toronto in goals as they made their only conference finals run of the 21st century. The following season, he was the only Leaf to average more than 1 PPG during their first-round loss to Philadelphia; he even assisted on Toronto’s lone goal in Game 7.3
From there, the final few seasons of Mogilny’s NHL career are less well-remembered — though they are captured beautifully (along with Mogilny’s full arc) by my friend
in this recent piece he wrote about the newest Hockey Hall of Famer:
The common thread across Mogilny’s entire journey was his ability to evolve — as well as his refusal to be defined by others. Every time he was given a label, from a generational scoring phenom to an injury-prone head-case, Mogilny broke out of it to reinvent himself as a player. By the end of his career, he’d destroyed the narrative that he was too selfish to win, or too soft for the big moment. He won a Stanley Cup, led playoff teams in scoring and earned the respect of teammates who once doubted him.
And in retirement, he eventually defied the notion that he wasn’t good enough for the Hall of Fame. The wait was probably longer than it should have been, but when the call finally came, it only confirmed what Mogilny had already proven — that he belonged among the game’s greats, not just a list of talented players who fell short of their potential.
Though Auston Matthews had a shot at it last year.
A 1997 contract holdout didn’t help matters, either.
Which somehow was not actually part of the Leafs’ current losing streak in Game 7s.
Thanks for the shout-out once again, my man. I remember talking to Randy Wood, who was on that Sabres team with AM’s 76 and I’d take it one step further than earning teammate’s respect—Wood, a pretty dry guy, sounded awed by AM at his peak. “It seemed like he’d never play another game where he wouldn’t score,” he said. Also that AMo was doing things 99 percent couldn’t but also making choices that he couldn’t figure out and wouldn’t occur to him. Sort of the same talk you’d get about Mario and nobody else. I do remember Doug Wilson pointing out to me that in Jersey on their run Mogilny’s #s of goals per 60 were Mario like and better than anyone in the league but a lot of times didn’t get first pp call … because he played harder when feeling slighted, hungrier (maybe not even at a conscious level). Like you had to give him something to play against … not just not-our-average player. Sine qua non (Mario excepted and at another level.) I was so lucky to catch him on a good day in Albany. I think he felt sorry for my having driven in a snowstorm himself.