Hockey Hall of Fame 2020: How ex-Devils stars Patrik Elias, Alexander Mogilny did in voting

Patrik Elias scored and set up goals consistently playing 1,240 NHL games over two decades, all of them in a Devils sweater. The Czech left winger also defended about as well as any forward in his era.

The four-time All-Star was a leader. He was first in the NHL in playoff points over a 10-year span. He was a huge part of two Stanley Cup teams.

“There wasn’t nothing that Elias couldn’t do in the game,” said highly respected TSN Canada hockey analyst Craig Button, a former NHL general manager.

Almost nothing. Elias has yet to convince the Hockey Hall of Fame’s 18-member selection committee that he’s worthy of induction.

On his second try, Elias was passed over again Wednesday when the six-member 2020 class was announced.

Five former players were elected – right wings Jarome Iginla and Marian Hossa, defensemen Kevin Lowe and Doug Wilson and women’s goalie Kim St-Pierre – along executive Ken Holland as a builder. They’re tentatively scheduled to be inducted in Toronto on Hall of Fame weekend from Nov. 13-15.

Lowe, who won five Cups with the Edmonton Oilers and one with the Rangers, was elected on his 20th year of eligibility. It took just one ballot for Iginla, who is 16th all-time with 625 goals, and Hossa, who scored 525. Wilson was a seven-time All-Star who won a Norris Trophy, Pierre led Canada to three Olympic goal medals and Holland won three Cups as GM for the Detroit Red Wings

Alexander Mogilny, a dynamic Russian left winger who had a 42-goal season and won a Cup during his two stints as a Devil, was passed over for the 12th time.

Elias, 44, is the Devils’ franchise leader with 408 goals, 617 assists and 1,205 points. In January 2009, his No. 26 was retired and raised to the Prudential Center rafters along with four other franchise greats – Hall of Famers Martin Brodeur (31), Scott Niedermayer (27), and Scott Stevens (4), and Ken Daneyko (3).

“It is one of my proudest moments that I was able to spend my entire career with one team,” Elias said on his jersey retirement night.

Elias is Hall of Fame worthy, too, former Devils long-time GM Lou Lamoriello told NJ Advance Media in 2017.

“Yes,” Lamoriello said. “He was a Devil all his life. He played for the logo. He didn’t cheat anything. He had tremendous talent and he had a career he and his family can be proud of.

“I had him from 18 years old to just about his whole career. He’s a champion. He deserves whatever recognition and accolades that are given. He’ll earn it. He played the game the right way, and I’m proud of him.”

Mogilny, 51, was a four-time All-Star and ranks 53rd all-time with 473 goals. His 76 goals in 1992-93 for the Buffalo Sabres tied Teemu Selanne for the league rank and are tied for the fifth most in a season. He also scored 55 playing for the Vancouver Canucks in 1995-96.

What is keeping Mogilny out of the Hall of Fame?

“He wasn’t consistent,” Sabres former director of hockey John Muckler once said. “He’d have ups and downs and you never could get a good read on whether Alex would show up the night he was playing.”

Mogilny, 51, first joined the Devils in March 2000 in a trade from the Canucks, and he ended up being the final puzzle piece to a club that beat the Dallas Stars in the Stanley Cup Finals. The next year, Mogilny racked up 43 goals and 83 points for a Devils team that finished one victory short of repeating, as it lost Game 7 of the Finals to the Colorado Avalanche.

Mogilny spent the next three seasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs, then after sitting out the lockout season in 2003-04, he rejoined the Devils as a free agent in August 2005 on a two-year, $7-million contract. Due to a chronic hip issue, Mogilny scored just 12 goals and 25 points over 34 games in his final NHL season, which included 19 games with the AHL’s Albany River Rats to give the Devils some salary cap relief.

Mogilny was at his best playing for Buffalo on a line centered by Hall of Famer Pat LaFontaine, who remembers his former teammate as one of hockey’s best and dynamic players.

“Just the talent alone, (Mogilny) was thinking the game at another level, and then he had the skill to complement that hockey sense.” LaFontaine told The Athletic in May. “He was just at another level. And I just looked at him like, ‘Wow.’ The things he could do on the ice, I’ve never seen anyone do really at that speed and that quickness and he was just he was a step ahead. He’s just phenomenal.

“Looking back at some of those years, those Buffalo years … Alex was a lot of fun to watch. I was just a co-pilot on the trip.”

Like Elias, Mogilny the wait for hockey immortality continues.

“I think they’re both Hall of Famers,” Button said.

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