both lafontaine and mogilny were in the highest level of offensive talents. obviously sub-gretzky, lemieux, howe, and the generational talents, but right up there in the next tier.
both guys had careers that didn't fully live up to their abilities. and for both of them, it was due to a mix of injuries that slowed them down at a relatively early age, and because their effort or interest flagged due to their situations on teams that were an absolute mess. funny that everybody bends over backwards to say you can't blame lafontaine for not caring near the end of his stint on the island, but nobody gives mogilny any slack for his indifference on a canucks team with such a rancid locker room and team dynamic that EVEN LIFELONG FANS stopped caring about.
i don't say this to diss lafontaine or prop up mogilny, i just think that they had pretty similar careers all told-- though obviously the full picture of lafontaine's career was a bit higher and seems to be the sliver of distinction between a low hall of famer and a high non-hall of famer. lafontaine was one of my first favourite players in the late 80s (there was a chapter on him in the first hockey book i ever read as a 7 year old-- got it at school from a scholastic catalogue; canadians know what i'm talking about). but if we excuse lafontaine's earliest years for coming in at the tail end of a dynasty and having trottier and sometimes brent sutter ahead of him, i think we have to note mogilny's historical circumstance as a 19 year old defector, from a small and remote soviet town (unlike fedorov or bure), who was genuinely worried for the safety of his family (both immediately after the defection, and later when he was making millions and his family was one of the ones targeted by the russian mafia), and being a guy who grew up as far away from moscow or st. petersburg as you can be and still be in the soviet union being deathly afraid of flying. i don't know, mogilny wasn't my favourite player, because you watched him and always were disappointed that he didn't do more out there, but you also just had to marvel at the amount of skill he had. there's no question that he had easily more ability than markus naslund, and a better mind for the game too. to me, he's a very interesting and complicated individual, and one of the more unique careers of his generation if you factor in all of the off-ice stuff.
but the point is, for both guys, the one time they performed up to their true level, the two year stretch from '91 to '93, interrupted at various points by injuries to both, was when each of them had a guy who could see and play the game the same way. this "product" talk, i think, is nonsense. their careers arcs indicate that there was just something special that these two guys had together that took both of them to another level.
