Why isn’t Alexander Mogilny in the Hockey Hall of Fame? There are clues

Alexander Mogilny won’t be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday night. He has been eligible for 15 years, with cries from critics intensifying upon each rejection.

Rebukes are delivered with indignation. The Athletic has called his exclusion “inexcusable.” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has labeled it “a disgrace,” Sportsnet “almost laughable” and the Toronto Star “nothing less than a crime.”

For the record, I believe Mogilny deserves induction. He produced one of the NHL’s most magical seasons, recorded wonderful career statistics and won a few awards along the way. His origin story is exhilarating; he was a true trailblazer, brazenly defecting from the Soviet Union to join the Buffalo Sabres. The Athletic two years ago ranked him the 89th greatest player in NHL history. 

My problem, however, is with the annual assertion that the reasons behind Mogilny’s exclusion are some great mystery.

It is true the Hockey Hall of Fame Selection Committee’s clandestine process means we’ll likely never know precisely why Mogilny has not been enshrined — or even if he has been so much as nominated. But the rationale has never been difficult to glean. Unmistakable clues have been chronicled for decades. 

Mogilny’s personality is almost always described through such vague adjectives as “mercurial,” “enigmatic,” “quirky” or “mysterious.”  What drove owners, general managers, coaches, teammates and fans bananas weren’t mere eccentricities. During his playing days, he was described as selfish, lazy, unreliable, a quitter and a passenger. Sporting sins, all.

As terrific as he was, Mogilny too often treated the sport as though it were beneath his ultimate effort and dedication. Those who played with him or watched him play — including Hall of Fame selection committees — could be excused for feeling cheated: awed by his otherworldly talents, but ultimately denied the joy of witnessing the heights of what he might have been.  

“If they had a championship for quitters, this man would wear the heavyweight crown,” Buffalo News columnist Jim Kelley wrote of Mogilny in May 1995. Three months later, Mogilny’s antics forced the Sabres to trade him.

Keep in mind that, at the time, Mogilny had delivered the best hockey of his career. His 1992-93 season was seismic. Mogilny amassed 76 goals and 127 points on a line with center Pat LaFontaine and left wing Dave Andreychuk, two future Hall of Famers.

A preponderance of weight is placed on that single season when the case is made for Mogilny’s induction. But just two years later, the Sabres couldn’t cope with him anymore.

You hear plenty from Mogilny associates who insist he deserves a spot in the Hall of Fame. Rarely do you hear a luminary from any sport declare on the record that a superstar doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame. Those already inducted never want to come off as selfish or curmudgeonly about their blessing; the more the merrier. And when was the last time we heard LaFontaine utter a negative word about anyone?

Still, praise about Mogilny from former teammates and team leaders is often delivered with caveats.

Hall of Famers Martin Brodeur and Lou Lamoriello have stated Mogilny belongs in the Hall of Fame. But in the autobiography “Brodeur: Beyond the Crease,” a few pointed passages appear about Mogilny’s troubling lack of desire: “After several games of trying Mogilny on the (power-play) point, Lamoriello waived him, insisting the move, ‘was about ridding the team of passengers.’ I always felt ‘Almo’ was a good player on a good team, but on a struggling team he was exposed for his tendencies and habits.”

Mats Sundin was amused by Alexander Mogilny’s antics during their time as teammates in Toronto. (Ken Faught / Toronto Star via Getty Images)

There are a bunch of Mogilny references in Hall of Fame center Mats Sundin’s book, “Home and Away.” Mogilny amused the Maple Leafs captain during their three seasons together. By that late stage of Mogilny’s career, his infamous aversion to injury rehabilitation was accepted as part of the package. Sundin wrote that after multiple surgeries on Mogilny’s arthritic left hip, Sundin urged him to work out with strength coach Matt Nichol for just 10 minutes a day to prolong his linemate’s career for 10 more years.

“Why the f— would I want to do that?” Sundin recalled Mogilny’s reply.

“He was arguably the most talented guy any of us had ever played with,” Sundin wrote, “but he was not interested in training off-ice with us.”

That, in a nutshell, illustrates how Mogilny was viewed among many of the boys. He was jovial and quick-witted, good for a laugh in the dressing room or on the road. But a refusal to push himself could make teammates want to repeatedly bash their Jofas into the half-wall.

Former teammates, of course, aren’t the ones deciding Mogilny’s fate at the Hall of Fame. That’s where the Hockey Hall of Fame Selection Committee comes in. They are the gatekeepers, tasked to protect the game’s most hallowed principles — whether we agree or not.

Several of Mogilny’s close hockey acquaintances have served on the revolving, 18-member Selection Committee, which needs 14 members to confer induction. The current group has included Brian Burke (his Vancouver Canucks GM) since 2012, Igor Larionov (his Central Red Army teammate) since 2011 and Ron Francis (his Toronto Maple Leafs teammate) since 2016. Canucks executive/coach and Maple Leafs coach Pat Quinn served five years of Mogilny’s eligibility, while New Jersey Devils broadcaster Mike Emrick served seven years.

Hockey Hall of Fame selectors are sworn to secrecy, but some wrote books before they committed. What’s interesting in reading these memoirs is what isn’t said about Mogilny’s impact. Burke’s autobiography, “Burke’s Law,” mentions Mogilny just once in regard to Vancouver signing countryman Pavel Bure away from the Soviet Union. Mogilny won the Stanley Cup with New Jersey in 2000, but Emrick’s autobiography, “Off Mike: How a Kid from Basketball-Crazy Indiana Became America’s NHL Voice,” doesn’t mention the right wing. Quinn’s posthumous biography, “Quinn: The Life of a Hockey Legend” by The Athletic’s Dan Robson, provides zero quotes, anecdotes or words about Mogilny.

There are various reasons why Mogilny might not receive credit in these books. A lack of mentions doesn’t necessarily reveal the authors’ feelings about Mogilny’s exclusion from the Hall of Fame. Collectively, however, the omissions are telling. Wouldn’t a surefire Hall of Fame teammate make an enduring impression on the luminaries around him? Shouldn’t he influence their reflections of excellence?

Current Hall of Fame selector and journalist Scott Morrison has written many books, including “By the Numbers: From 00 to 99,” which is about the greatest players to wear each number. Mogilny was the obvious choice for No. 89, with Morrison writing, “While always a terrific player and a dangerous scorer, Mogilny only once came close to those (1992-93) numbers again, always being very good, but not always great.”

Mogilny’s bullet-point resume looks Hall of Fame-reasonable on paper. In addition to the stats and his dramatic origin story, he won a Stanley Cup, Olympic and IIHF World Championship gold medals to become a member of the Triple Gold Club, a Lady Byng, and is frequently (and erroneously) credited as the NHL’s first Russian-born captain.

But all his accomplishments come with qualifiers. He never was voted first-team All-Star — although he did make a pair of second-teams — and finished among the top 10 in goals thrice and points twice in his 15 seasons.

Alexander Mogilny and Pavel Bure at the 1993 All-Star Game. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

Not even Mogilny’s singular campaign is unassailable. Bernie Nicholls scored 70 goals in a season, scored two more career goals than Mogilny and recorded 117 more points in 137 more games. Yet Nicholls is not in the Hall of Fame either.

Mogilny won his Stanley Cup as a trade-deadline acquisition. He skated on the Devils’ third line, adding four goals and three assists in 23 postseason games. Sports Illustrated legend Michael Farber (a Hall of Fame selector until two years ago) wrote during the Final series against the Dallas Stars how Mogilny “skated in alone on a breakaway and took the most pedestrian of shots, a wrister from 25 feet. It was thigh-high, right at (Ed) Belfour’s glove, an effort worthy of an optional morning skate in January and not a potential Cup-winning goal in June. … The game turned on Mogilny’s middling effort, which seemed to energize Dallas.”

Over his career, Mogilny’s postseason scoring average plummeted to 0.69 points a game after averaging 1.04 points in the regular season.

“He’s so concerned with his sticks and skates I think he drives himself nuts, as well as us,” Devils coach Larry Robinson said during a 2001 postseason stretch in which Mogilny scored one goal over 19 games. “He’s thinking about it all the time. And you know in this business some of the best thinking you do is the thinking you don’t do.”

Regarding the Triple Gold Club and its requisite IIHF World Championships gold medal, that tournament never has carried any great degree of import to a player’s legacy, as it’s comprised of players not in the NHL postseason. Of the 30 Triple Gold Club members, 22 are Hall-eligible yet only 10 have been admitted.

The Lady Byng is far from a clincher. Eighteen winners are not in the Hall of Fame despite being eligible. Mogilny’s propensity to avoid contact and defense helped minimize his penalty minutes. Even so, he was suspended 10 games in January 1992 for slapping linesman Dan Schachte upside the head after being called for a slashing major and game misconduct.

Mogilny’s captaincy is regularly cited as leadership confirmation. Not nearly. Sabres coach John Muckler put the interim “C” on Mogilny’s sweater in November 1993 while LaFontaine was sidelined by a knee injury. The promotion was considered a ploy.

“Either Muckler thought it would motivate him to get back to form or owner Seymour Knox thought it would be a cool idea to have the first Russian captain,” Vancouver Province columnist Tony Gallagher wrote. “When informed some other Russian had been a captain … Knox went snakey.”

True enough, the New York Americans named Russian-born forward Sweeney Schriner their captain in the 1930s, further muddling another Hall of Fame talking point.

“The experiment of captain was a failure,” Kelley wrote. “Mogilny is many things, including a complex and mysterious personality, but he is not a leader.”

It should be noted Kelley, Gallagher and Farber are Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award recipients. That’s the Hockey Hall of Fame’s lifetime honor for print journalists. Washington Times reporter Dave Fay also won it, and he summed Mogilny this way: “a brilliant wing when properly motivated, a hand grenade missing its pin most other times.”

Among the misguided Mogilny narratives is how injuries robbed him of reaching the coveted 1,000-game milestone, but he needed just 10 more. The shortfall could have been overcome without his contract squabbles or distaste for working out. After breaking his leg in the 1993 playoffs, Mogilny eschewed injury rehabilitation and spent his offseason playing golf, delaying his return by as much as a month. He missed 16 games the next season.

“He rehabbed on the golf course. The Sabres were so steamed at his consistent failure to attend physio that Muckler and then-general manager Gerry Meehan read him the riot act, which went in one ear and out the other,” Gallagher wrote. “He was weeks late back into the lineup.”

Mogilny skipped the Canucks’ first 16 games of 1997-98 because of a holdout. By the time he reported, the Canucks were 3-11-2 and deep into a 10-game losing skid, had fired Quinn as president/GM and would fire coach Tom Renney three games later.

“While Mogilny remains a popular figure in the dressing room, and his brilliant abilities unquestioned,” wrote Vancouver Sun columnist Gary Mason in January 1998, “his play this season has become a joke among some players. He has played with little passion or commitment since re-signing with the team. He seems resigned to the fact he’s being traded and is playing like it, going through the motions while cashing his checks.”

The Buffalo News has speculated Mogilny is being stiff-armed by Hockey Hall of Fame gatekeepers who, wary of Mogilny’s decision not to collect his 2003 Lady Byng or attend his 2016 Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame induction, fear he would embarrass the Hall of Fame by declining to show up.

The newspaper’s hypothesis, however, fails to recognize Kelley’s scrutiny. “Jim Kelley Way,” designated when he died in 2010, is the stretch of Washington Avenue between the Buffalo News’ former offices and KeyBank Center, where the Sabres play. A year later, Kelley was inducted into the Sabres Hall of Fame along with Mogilny, who did show up — in a tuxedo, no less.

It seems clear, rightly or wrongly, the reasons Mogilny hasn’t gotten into the Hockey Hall of Fame are related to hockey violations that enough gatekeepers have deemed unforgivable. He’s viewed through the lens of how majestic his career could have been, if only he’d applied himself to the fullest.

Kelley acknowledged Mogilny was “the greatest goal scorer the Buffalo Sabres have ever known,” better than even Gilbert Perreault.

But for the man who covered Mogilny’s entire professional arc — up close at Mogilny’s best — character flaws eclipsed on-ice contributions. In hockey, that matters, and it certainly matters to the guardians of the game’s glory.

“You could never call him a team player, and you couldn’t count on him to always show up, let alone lead,” Kelley wrote after the Sabres traded Mogilny to the Canucks. “Mogilny’s history is one of a player and a person who never was much for sticking out tough times in the hopes of making things better. He was, and I suspect still is, a cut-and-run kind of guy.”

Seventy-six goals are incredible. They’ve been scored inside one campaign only six other times, with Wayne Gretzky doing it twice. Brett Hull, Mario Lemieux, Phil Esposito and Teemu Selanne are in the Hall of Fame, too, but those extraordinary seasons aren’t why. The Hall of Fame problem for Mogilny has been that throughout his career he provided too many reasons why not.

Mogilny possessed sublime talents that helped him statistically eclipse many Hall of Famers — and it should be noted that not all inductees were flawless, hard-working teammates and employees. On top of his skill and accomplishments on the ice, Mogilny’s willingness to escape the Soviet Union expedited an NHL transformation.

One of these years, he deserves induction. But let’s stop pretending we have no idea why it hasn’t happened.  

(Top photo: Rick Stewart / Getty Images)