Hockey Hall of Fame needs to induct Sabres star Alexander Mogilny

The Hunt for Red October: Mogilny’s defection

Let’s be clear, no Russian submarines were involved in the defection but if I can slip in one of the all-time great films into an article I’m going to do it. The story of Mogilny’s defection started with a business card handed to him by Don Luce at the World Junior Championships in Alaska. From there it was clandestine conversations and jumping into a car with the KGB running after him. It ends with him landing at NY’s LaGuardia airport requesting political asylum.

“Mogilny was the first Soviet player to defect and the KGB was doing everything they could to try and prevent that. Even so, Luce says that the 20 year old did not come across as worried. “Alex wasn’t worried at all, he was very confident, he knew what he wanted to do from the get-go and he was going to do it. He was probably the most calm of all of us.” Luce says that they were aware that Mogilny was not the only one taking a big risk. “We were warned the first time Gerry went to the consulate that we were in serious danger.”

WGRZ

Let that story settle in and then think of all the great young Russian players that were allowed to come afterwards like Sergei Federov, Pavel Bure, and Alexander Ovechkin. That doesn’t happen without a 20-year-old Alexander Mogilny defecting and the Soviets wanting to save face by not having many more do the same. For that alone, Mogilny deserves to be in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

One last note, Mogilny had a fear of flying. It was so bad that there were times he simply got off the plane if the pilot warned of turbulence before take off. According to Randy Moller a former teammate in Buffalo, “He did that a number of times. He was petrified of flying.”

For his career, Mogilny scored 473 goals and 1032 points in 990 games. He played 6 seasons with the Sabres, 5 with the Vancouver Canucks, and 3 with both the Toronto Maple Leafs and New Jersey Devils.