Former Sabres Barrasso, Turgeon elected to Hockey Hall of Fame

Tom Barrasso was not expecting to receive a call from the Hockey Hall of Fame when it announced its Class of 2023 on Wednesday. The former Buffalo Sabres goaltender was in his 18th year of eligibility and had accepted the possibility his call may never come.

"I was definitely not waiting by the phone," Barrasso said. "In fact, they had a hard time getting a hold of me even after they had made the decision."

Barrasso did eventually receive the call, as did former Sabres forward Pierre Turgeon. The pair will be inducted during a ceremony in Toronto on Monday, November 13 alongside fellow players Henrik Lundqvist, Caroline Ouellette, and Mike Vernon and builders Ken Hitchcock and Pierre Lacroix.

Buffalo drafted Turgeon with the first-overall selection in 1987. He compiled 323 points (122+201) in 322 games spanning parts of five seasons with the organization, including a career-best 106-point campaign in 1989-90 that is tied for the fourth-best mark in franchise history.

Turgeon was traded to the New York Islanders in October 1991 as part of the package that brought fellow Hall-of-Fame centerman Pat LaFontaine to Buffalo. He scored 1,327 points (515+812) in 1,294 career games for Buffalo, New York, Montreal, St. Louis, Dallas, and Colorado.

"I still play, and I still go out there twice a week because I love the game so much," Turgeon said. "So, it's definitely an honor and a privilege to be a part of this."

Barrasso, the fifth-overall pick by the Sabres in 1983, won the Calder Trophy as the NHL's top rookie and the Vezina Trophy as its top goaltender when he posted an .893 save percentage and a 2.85 goals-against average as an 18-year-old in 1983-84. He won the Jennings Trophy the following season after posting a league-best 2.67 goals-against average and five shutouts.

Barrasso went on to finish second in Vezina Trophy voting twice during his five-plus seasons with Buffalo, during which he earned 124 wins in 266 games. Both numbers rank fifth among goaltenders in Sabres history. He won back-to-back Stanley Cups as a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1991 and 1992.

"It's a tremendous honor to have been selected by the committee and it puts a bit of a validation on the idea of what I thought along the way of my career," Barrasso said. "My gratitude to the people that helped me along the way is the thing that strikes me the most today."

Turgeon and Barrasso are the 12th and 13th former Sabres players to earn induction and the first since Dave Andreychuk in 2017.