You can talk a lot about hockey, argue about its advantages and disadvantages, cheer for your favorite team or separately for your favorite athletes. Victories and defeats in this sport serve as a source of strong emotions for both the players themselves and the fans. And Olympic medals, points and goals at the World Championships evoke feelings that are sometimes impossible to convey and describe.
The people who left a bright mark in the history of world hockey are Alexander Mogilny. This is just the case when a sport becomes not only a favorite pastime, entertainment and passion. He becomes the whole life of man.
Hockey biography
Alexander Gennadievich Mogilny was born in the city of Khabarovsk on February 18, 1969. From an early age, parents helped Sasha get up on the ice. Living with his parents in the Southern microdistrict, he had to get quite far to the First microdistrict, where the Yunost club was located. His coach Valery Dementiev was able to discern the ability to hockey in a guy. Despite the fact that Sasha was two years younger than his age, he enlisted the guy in his team.
At the age of fifteen, he moved to train in Moscow at the invitation of the CSKA sports club. Showing good results and considerable ability, the guy did not go unnoticed by the coaches of this club. Soon he was invited to play as part of the youth team of CSKA.
First results
Already in 1988, Mogilny was a hockey player who achieved unusual results in his work at the age of nineteen. At this point, he is an honored master of sports. In the same year, at the Olympics in Calgary, the puck scored by Mogilny was decisive in the final match with the Canadians. But Alexander until the last moment was not sure that he would be part of the main team of the Olympic team, although he did his best in training. However, as it turned out later, he got to the Olympics for the first and last time.
In 1989, the guy became the best striker of the youth world championship, as well as three-time champion of the Soviet Union, once again proving his talent and iron character. And the style of Mogilny made the whole world look at Soviet hockey in a new way.
Escape story
At the end of 1988, in Alaska, in Anchorage, during the World Youth Championship, a young hockey player met with the coach-selector of the Buffalo Sabers club Don Luce. He offered Alexander his business card, specifying that these contact numbers can be used to contact him at any time. It was this meeting that contributed to the subsequent events in the life of a young hockey player.
Back at the Calgary Olympics, the Mogilny attracted the attention of the Buffalo Sabers with beautiful pucks and assists. The opinions of the club's coaches agreed that few Soviet hockey players are distinguished by unusual skating and show an extraordinary, peculiar game. But Grave is exactly that.
Hockey refugee
In May 1989, in Stockholm, the end of the fifty-third world hockey championship took place to the exclamation of victory in honor of the Soviet national team. The whole team was in a good mood waiting for the plane to return to Moscow when officials received a call about the escape of Alexander Mogilny. This news sounded to everyone like a bolt from the blue. The joyful return home was ruined. Team coach Viktor Tikhonov did not immediately believe this news. After all, not long ago, Sasha asked to help him with an apartment in Moscow, so that his parents and his bride could be transported to the capital. However, the facts testified to something else. Therefore, both the coach and the whole team were sure that Mogilny could not resist the tempting sums of money that the American NHL stars earn.
Difficult decision
Having disappeared from Stockholm, the young hockey player did not immediately join the coveted Buffalo Sabers. After all, his act and future life in the United States of America the club leadership had to be justified before the president of the National Hockey League, John Ziegler and the immigration authorities.
Entrance to the Grave in the country was allowed temporarily. To obtain permanent permission, he needed to present to the immigration center convincing political motives for fleeing the Soviet Union.
In turn, for the National Hockey League, Alexander Mogilny could represent another serious obstacle in relations with the USSR when concluding contracts with hockey players.
At the right time, at the right place
Over the past few years, American teams have made every effort to replenish their ranks with promising players from the USSR. Sometimes negotiations lasted for years. This was experienced by such Soviet hockey players as Vyacheslav Fetisov, in negotiations with the Devils club, Vladimir Krutov and Igor Larionov with the Vancouver Canucks team. The first player to receive permission to travel and work at Calgary Flames was Sergei Pryakhin.
The grave, one might say, was lucky, since his flight occurred at the time of the warming of relations between the sports organizations of the Soviet Union and the United States of America. Therefore, according to the calculations of American representatives, the guy’s act should not have given good reason for concern and special complications between the relations of the two countries. After all, the decision to flee was made by the player, respectively, and the responsibility for the consequences would lie with him.
Reason for flight
The hockey player saw other foundations of life abroad, and all the negative moments accumulated in Sasha’s soul during the period of the game in the USSR broke out. Naturally, the guy wanted a normal human life, not squeezed by rigid fetters.
However, Alexander Mogilny did not immediately decide to apply for a work permit and political asylum in the United States of America. The key impetus was the news of the preparation of a criminal case on him for desertion from the ranks of the Soviet army. And then the guy deliberately decided to change his future.
At the end of the championship, representatives of the Buffalo Sabers club Don Luce and Meehan specially arrived in Stockholm to meet with Alexander. So that Mogilny could fly to New York, and then to Buffalo, all the necessary documents were made to him in two days. Next was to overcome one of the main obstacles for the young guy - learning English.
After some time, the National Hockey League nevertheless supported the Buffalo Sabers contract with a young hockey player from the USSR. This decision was also influenced by the rather passive reaction of the Soviet Federation, which in this story also found its benefits.
The “traitor” of the motherland
Mogilny managed to conclude a contract with an American club, so he never returned home, contrary to the expectations of his relatives. And in the Soviet Union, because of this, an incredible scandal began in the meantime. Sasha was considered practically a traitor to his homeland, which did not justify the trust placed in him. His parents appeared at that time in the image of “enemies of the people”, and they lived at home no easier than their son in a foreign country.
However, after some time, the passions subsided. And Mogilny became a kind of pioneer in the National Hockey League. After all, after it many hockey players of the USSR began to leave the ocean, and this happened through an official way and without a political color.
Life in a foreign land
The fact that Mogilny arrived in America not as a superhero, but as a fugitive, speaks of his further unsweetened life. Enthusiastic articles in newspapers and magazines did not come out about the hockey player; he was not invited to various American television shows. Even an interview with reporters was inaccessible to him because of lack of knowledge of the English language and fear of KGB agents. Twad
the hockey player, leaving his homeland, burned all the bridges behind him, and life should continue.
Phil Housley - Sabers defender, took a young guy under his guardianship. He noticed more than others how miserable the Grave looked. The hockey player very often, when the whole team had fun, sat on the sidelines with a sad face. After all, he constantly missed his relatives.
Nevertheless, overcoming the multifaceted cultural and life barriers, including the differences between the American style of playing hockey, Alexander found the strength to start a new life.
Alexander the Great
In the late eighties, “Buffalo” was a mid-level club. Hockey in the team was unattractive and not particularly distinguished by cunning combinations. The composition of the players lacked competent, professional and famous hockey players.
Sasha gradually developed mutual understanding with the guys from the team.
The game went especially well when Pat Lafontaine appeared in the club. He and Mogilny played wonderfully. In the early 90's, this couple was nicknamed the "Dynamic Duet." Since the arrival of Lafontaine, their joint work has brought 39 abandoned goals. And after the 1992-1993 season. thanks to the brilliant work of Mogilny, Buffalo was seriously talked about as a possible winner in the Stanley Cup.
For a relatively short period of time, Alexander, who was called the Great in America, scored 76 goals, made 51 assists and got 127 points. In addition, the fiftieth puck he was abandoned in the forty-sixth match of the season. However, he could not get into the club “50 goals in 50 matches”, which included famous hockey players Maurice Richard, Brett Hull, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Mike Bossi. The reason was the fact that Buffalo had already played the fifty-third match of the season.
Nevertheless, the seventh place among the top scorers in America took Alexander Mogilny. A photo of the young hockey player flashed again in the press. After all, being a Russian, he became the first best sniper of the National Hockey League, and his “Russian record” has not been broken today.
Ups and downs
However, having achieved great achievements in hockey, Mogilny faced with disappointments. Alexander showed an excellent playoff game and even scored ten points in seven matches. But in the third match, the striker broke his leg. This injury seriously affected the next game of the team. Having been defeated by Montreal, Buffalo ended his journey to the Stanley Cup.
Not fully recovered, Mogilny played another two seasons in his native team. However, due to inefficiency, he was exchanged for Vancouver, where he scored fifty-five beautiful goals in his first season. But the magnificent takeoff was again followed by injuries and setbacks. And only in 2001 there was an event about which not only world but also Russian hockey players dream. The grave is also no exception. As part of the “New Jersey”, he was able to earn eighty-three points in the regular season, so the team won the Stanley Cup.
Alexander the Great for sixteen seasons played in the NHL, six times won the right to participate in the Match of the Stars. In 2011, he was elected to the Buffalo Sabers Hall of Fame.
Today, Alexander Mogilny with his wife and two sons lives in Florida. But he does not forget his homeland. Working as an assistant to the president of the Amur club in Khabarovsk, he flies to Russia several times a year.