Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550/WBEN) – The Class of 2023 for the Hockey Hall of Fame was announced on Wednesday, and will feature two former Buffalo Sabres first-round draft picks - Pierre Turgeon and Tom Barrasso.
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The Sabres took Turgeon first overall in the 1987 NHL Draft, and then traded him to the New York Islanders in 1991 as part of the trade for Pat LaFontaine.
In 322 games with Buffalo, Turgeon scored 122 goals and 201 assists for 323 points.
Turgeon went on to play 255 games with the Islanders before playing 104 games with the Montreal Canadiens, later becoming their captain. He also played 327 games with the St. Louis Blues, 207 games with the Dallas Stars and 79 games with the Colorado Avalanche.
In 19 NHL seasons, Turgeon played 1,294 games, scoring 515 goals and 812 assists for 1,327 points.
As for Barrasso, he doesn’t have great numbers over the span of his 12-year NHL career, but played when players were scoring over 200 points per-season.
Barrasso was taken fifth overall by the Sabres in the 1983 NHL Draft. He went right from high school into the crease for the Sabres and won the Vezina and Calder Trophies. In his second season, he was second in Vezina voting and won the Jennings Trophy.
The American-born goalie ended up playing 266 games with the Sabres, going 124-102-28.
In 1988, Barrasso was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins, where he played 460 games and won two Stanley Cups in 1991 and 1992.
Barrasso also played 34 games with the Carolina Hurricanes, seven with the Ottawa Senators, six with St. Louis and four with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
In 777 career NHL games, Barrasso was 369-277-86 with a 3.24 goals-against average and an .892 save percentage.
Other members of the Class of 2023 for the Hockey Hall of Fame are Mike Vernon, Caroline Ouelette, Henrik Lundqvist, Ken Hitchcock and Pierre Lacroix.
As for former Sabres winger Alexander Mogilny, he was, once again, snubbed from joining the Hockey Hall of Fame in his 15th try.
The former fifth-round pick of the Sabres in the 1988 NHL Draft spent six seasons with the organization from 1989 to 1995. During that time, he scored 211 goals and registered 233 assists for 444 points in 381 games.
Mogilny still holds the franchise record for most goals in a season during his 1992-92 season when he netted 76 goals in 77 games played.
Following the 1994-95 season, Mogilny was traded to the Vancouver Canucks, where he played parts of five seasons and racked up 308 points (139+169) in 312 games played.
The native of Khabarovsk in the old Soviet Union played a total of 16 seasons in the NHL, where he played a total of 990 games, scoring 473 goals and adding 559 assists for 1,032 points. He also spent time with the Toronto Maple Leafs and New Jersey Devils, where he won his only Stanley Cup back in 2000.