Qui l’a porté le mieux? #87 Edition Pierre Turgeon.

Pierre Turgeon: C 2005-2007 84GP, 16-35-51, 48PIM

                     Career: 1987-2007 1403GP, 550-874-1424, 488PIM

Bienvenue! Er, Welcome to Burgundy Rainbow’s installment for jersey number 87. Once again only one player has graced this number while playing for the Avalanche. And if he’d had his way, he’d have worn another set of digits. Also again, we find another player choosing Colorado as the place to finish out his career.

Pierre Turgeon currently holds a distinctive and unfortunate claim: he’s the highest scoring eligible player to not be memorialized in the NHL Hall of Fame. His regular season stats of 515 goals and 812 assists for 1,327 points in 1,294 games matches up well with Hall of Fame inductees like Denis Savard and Dave Andreychuk. Turgeon’s career was definitely more productive than recent honoree, Martin St Louis (1,134GP, 391-642-1033).

Turgeon’s HOF-worthy career spanned twenty years. He was drafted first over-all by the Buffalo Sabres in the 1987 entry draft. That was the same draft in which Joe Sakic was selected sixteenth. Pierre immediately stepped in to the Sabres’ roster contributing a solid, if not Calder caliber, .5 points per game. He turned his game up a notch after that rookie year and became a consistent point-per-game producer. For the 89-90 season he put up 106 points in eighty games. Every full season Turgeon played for the Sabres, they made the playoffs.

Even with the consistent playoff appearances, Buffalo came no closer to the Stanley Cup. In October of 1991, Turgeon was packaged with Uwe Krupp, and two other players in a block-buster trade with the Islanders that brought Pat LaFontaine, two additional players and a 4th round pick to upstate New York.

As an Islander, Turgeon stepped up his game yet again. His personal best came in 1992-93. That year he played all 82 games – for the first and only time – and chalked up 132 points. Pierre was awarded the Lady Bing trophy and came in the top-five for the Hart. Needless to say the Islanders made the playoffs that year. Turgeon suffered a separated shoulder during the postseason due to a late cross-check by Washington’s Dale Hunter. Pierre missed seven games to came back for the Islander’s semi-final tilt with the Canadiens. Hunter missed twenty-one games for the illegal hit. Even with Turgeon’s return, the Islanders still missed getting to the Stanley Cup final.

Impressed with his play (and his French), Montreal traded for Turgeon in the middle of the strike-shortened 94-95 season. It was another big multi-player trade involving him and Vladamir Malakhov moving to Canada in exchange for Kirk Muller, Mathieu Schneider, and Craig Darby. He wore the captain’s C for the 95-96 season and kept his production humming to the tune of 96 points.

Again, Turgeon found himself the center-piece of a huge trade. After only one full season in the province of his birth, he was sent packing to St Louis. The Blues teams of the 90s were about as stacked as they come. Pierre found himself playing alongside the likes of Brett Hull, Pavol Demitra, Keith Tkachuk, Chris Pronger, and Al MacInnis. The 2000-01 season was the high point of Turgeon’s time in St Louis, as the team went all the way to the conference finals. They lost to the eventual Stanley Cup Champions, the Colorado Avalanche.

Turgeon left the blues after the 2001 season as a free agent and, for the first time, chose where he would next play hockey. He picked up the offer from the Dallas Stars and signed a three-year contract. Unfortunately, 2001 ended up being the final peak of his career. Pierre would never again score and assist at better than a point-per-game. His years in Dallas were still respectable scoring more than forty points each season and still showing up in the Lady Bing voting, as he had nearly every season prior.

A free agent once again in 2004, Turgeon took the entirety of the lockout cancelled season off. For 2005, he chose Colorado and signed a two-year contract. Both parties were aware that this was likely Pierre’s last contract. There was just one hitch. For his entire tenure in the NHL, he had worn 77. That number was no longer available for the Avs as they had retired it in honor of Raymond Bourque and his contribution to the 2001 Championship season. That’s how Turgeon ended up wearing 87 in Colorado.

The 05-06 season went reasonably well with Turgeon putting up 46 points in 62 games plus a playoff series. Just seventeen games into the 2006 season, though, Pierre decided to call it a career. And it was as full as they come. Of his nineteen full seasons in the NHL, only four did not include playoff hockey. Three times he went as far as the conference finals. Pierre was nominated for the Lady Bing Trophy fifteen times, winning it in 1993. He’s also received nominations for the Hart and Selk trophies throughout his career. And he’s played in five All-Star games.

If there were any knocks against this outstanding player to prevent him from inclusion in the Hall of Fame, it would be these: He’s only played a full season three times (two of them only being 80-games long) and he’s never been on a Stanley Cup winning team. Yet his personal statistics are as good or better than several other inductees.

But that shouldn’t keep us from from remembering this exceptional athlete. Although he chose the Avalanche in the twilight of his abilities, we should be honored that he did. He chose Colorado as the place to not only finish out his playing time but to begin the next chapter of his life. He continues to live in the Denver area with his family and now focuses on the next generation. The Turgeons have a son in the Red Wings organization having been drafted in 2014, and a daughter playing hockey at Harvard.

Thanks for choosing Colorado, Pierre, it was an honor!