Remember the Almo, fellow Hockey Hall of Famers in praise of Mogilny

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Postmedia concludes its profiles of the 2025 Hockey Hall of Fame class with winger Alex Mogilny, who joins seven other inductees at Monday night’s gala in Toronto.

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HALL CALL EXPLAINED: Six players and two builders were nominated this year, each receiving a 75% vote or higher from the 18 members of the selection committee in a secret ballot. A maximum of six players (four male and two female) can be chosen and two builders, unless someone is named from the referee/linesman category.

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WHY ALEX IS IN: He’s a member of hockey’s exclusive Triple Gold Club with a Stanley Cup (2000 with New Jersey), Olympic title (1988) and a world championship (1989). Throw in the 1989 world junior gold, too, just before he defected from Russia. He topped the Buffalo Sabres, Vancouver Canucks and Toronto Maple Leafs in scoring in various years, including 76 goals in 77 games for the 1992-93 Sabres. He won the 2003 Lady Byng Trophy as a Leaf with 79 points and just 12 penalty minutes.

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IN HIS OWN WORDS: We must be flexible here as Mogilny chose to stay in Russia and not attend his induction, while being very low key on commentary since his 16-year wait ended in June.

But there’s no disputing his rightful place in the puck pantheon.

“I was a huge fan of his,” fellow inductee Joe Thornton said. “I used to go to Buffalo (from St. Thomas, Ont.) to watch him. He and Pat Lafontaine were my guys. I would have loved to meet with him and talk to him. It’s unfortunate he’s not here.”

It was to the Sabres that Mogilny first came after a clandestine defection as the former Soviet Union began to crumble. He chose No. 89 to commemorate the year he bolted, making an impact similar to Swedish defenceman Borje Salming’s NHL arrival in 1973.

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In his first game as a Sabre, he scored 20 seconds after puck-drop and had seven shots on goal. In 1991, he tied an NHL record by scoring five seconds into a game against the Leafs, When hulking blueliner Zdeno Chara started his Hall of Fame career with the New York Islanders in the late 1990s, Mogilny was lighting it up in Vancouver, soon to win a Cup in Jersey.

“All (the Russians) were fast, super-highly skilled and advanced compared to other good players,” Chara said. “They just brought a different energy. Every time they had the puck it was just an explosion. They provided the excitement fans were looking for in that (dead puck) era.

“The guys who came from Russia, they made the league better.”

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Chosen earlier for the Hall, Sergei Fedorov and Pavel Bure were Mogilny’s linemates back home.

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“Alex was faster than all of us,” Fedorov once opined. “Alex was a machine, he was built like a machine. On top of all the crazy skill he had, he’s better than all of us. If you went back and forth five times, (Mogilny) will be first, I will be third.”

A young Duncan Keith, also going into the Hall this weekend with Chara and Mogilny, tried to get tickets to see the latter whenever his Penticton Panthers of the BCHL had a game in the Vancouver area.

“I was sitting up in the nosebleed section (of Rogers Arena) and he stood out just with his speed and skill,” the three-time Cup-winning defenceman said. “You see it on TV, but it was another level being able to witness that in person.”

Mogilny has skipped presentations before and was roundly criticized for not appearing in his own team’s city to accept the Byng in ‘03, with a flippant “who’d want an award named after a Lady?”

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He regretted the quip and insisted it was an honour to be included with previous winners of the trophy for sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct with a high level of play, such as Wayne Gretzky, Dave Keon and ironically, Hall selection committee chairman Ron Francis.

When Francis finally reached Mogilny with news of his induction (he was asleep in Russia with the time difference), Francis joked it would be a good time for Mogilny to open a bottle of vintage red wine Francis had gifted him in their one year together as Leafs in 2003-04. Mogilny assisted on a Francis milestone point.

Canucks’ goalie Corey Hirsch was fortunate to have played with Mogilny and Bure and once made the difficult comparison of the two talents.

“Pav was electric, he’d bring you out of your seat whenever he had the puck. But a player with the best all-around game that could play defence, offence, protect the puck, one-timers, wrist shots, everything, who could do everything at an extremely high level, Alex was probably the best all-around player I’ve ever seen, that I’ve ever played with.”

Lhornby@postmedia.com

X: @sunhornby

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