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How Good/Bad was Sylvain Turgeon?

The Panther

The Panther

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Mar 25, 2014
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Pierre's elder brother. Went 2nd overall to Hartford in '83 (thus selected ahead of Yzerman and Lafontaine).

I vaguely recall seeing him play a bit in the late-80s and early-90s, but I was always underwhelmed.

He was a pretty big guy. The stats suggest he was a borderline star-in-the-making his first three NHL seasons in Hartford, but in his fourth year (1986-87) he missed half the season... and Hartford finished in 1st for the first and only time.

After that, his scoring sharply declined. He got in one last 30-goal season for a non-playoff Jersey team, but then went to Montreal for two injury-riddled, unimpressive seasons. Ended up on expansion Ottawa for his last few seasons (minus 54 his first season and a half there). Retired from the NHL after the short work-stoppage season.

One season in the IHL with Houston, then started a second career in Europe, playing in Italy, Germany, Switzerland until 2001 or 2002.

His playoff stats are pretty bad, and are horrid after his first showing in 1986, during which he scored 5 points in 9 games for the Whale. After that? 6 points in 27 games, minus 12.


Kind of an odd career profile then. Usually with players who are highly-ranked at draft time and then don't quite live up the hype -- esp. of his era -- they get phased out due to lack of size. But Sylvain Turgeon was big and strong, and should have been able to transition to 90s' NHL relatively well.

Even his 2nd overall selection by Hartford is a bit baffling to me. Yeah, he scored 163 points in 67 games, but that left him 60 points behind Pat Lafontaine, playing in the same League. I assume the Whalers thought the size difference justified this?

In short, how good/bad was this guy?
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I probably saw a similar amount of him that you did given that I'm pretty sure we're close to the same age and grew in roughly the same timezone away from the Whalers. So in his prime with the whalers, they weren't a team I paid attention to and one of the teams I considered worth skipping when they played the jets since they weren't a particularly good or exciting team. I remember him being a typical sniper, not as soft as his brother, pretty good goal scorer but not much else. Just a decent scoring line guy, not spectacular.



That being said I do remember him with the habs and sens who I watched a fair bit of during that time period when they were on HNIC, and he didn't age well at all, I remember thinking he was completely useless on those teams. Crazy how he was traded for Claude Lemieux who was, well we all know what he was but he was 100x more valuable then a washed up Sylvain turgeon.
 
streitz said:
I probably saw a similar amount of him that you did given that I'm pretty sure we're close to the same age and grew in roughly the same timezone away from the Whalers. So in his prime with the whalers, they weren't a team I paid attention to and one of the teams I considered worth skipping when they played the jets since they weren't a particularly good or exciting team. I remember him being a typical sniper, not as soft as his brother, pretty good goal scorer but not much else. Just a decent scoring line guy, not spectacular.



That being said I do remember him with the habs and sens who I watched a fair bit of during that time period when they were on HNIC, and he didn't age well at all, I remember thinking he was completely useless on those teams. Crazy how he was traded for Claude Lemieux who was, well we all know what he was but he was 100x more valuable then a washed up Sylvain turgeon.
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Great wheels with a big shot (slapper or wrister). Don't recall his injury but he was never the same player again.

Typical Whalers draft pick. Next 3 were Lafontaine, Yzerman and Barrasso.

What I remember best about him was that he told the media, when he was a rookie, that his little brother was a lot better player than he was.
 
Abdominal injuries set him back a bit in Hartford, that and his defensive game was poor. 495 points in 669 games isn't terrible, but not that great either. Devils sure got the better end of the trade with Montreal, Claude Lemieux was great in New Jersey while Turgeon never found his game in Montreal.
 
brachyrynchos said:
Abdominal injuries set him back a bit in Hartford, that and his defensive game was poor. 495 points in 669 games isn't terrible, but not that great either. Devils sure got the better end of the trade with Montreal, Claude Lemieux was great in New Jersey while Turgeon never found his game in Montreal.
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That's right. He had a hard time shaking that injury.

Should note the Whale did OK when they traded Turgeon, got back Pat Verbeek.
 
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Most I just remember always equating him with Bobby Carpenter (and later, Jimmy Carson), as guys who started out with a bang and then had a precipitous drop off.

Seems to have happened more frequently in that era than it does today.
 
Ghost of David Bruce said:
Most I just remember always equating him with Bobby Carpenter (and later, Jimmy Carson), as guys who started out with a bang and then had a precipitous drop off.

Seems to have happened more frequently in that era than it does today.
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I was just going to mention Carpenter as a comparison
 
i only saw late career disappointment sylvain turgeon, which was like watching anyone on the current canucks older than bo horvat. physical abilities fallen off a cliff, no hockey sense with which to compensate, not having fun, and probably doesn’t especially care if the team wins or loses anymore.

what i remember is 1. injuries either destroyed him or destroyed his will to fight/compete (depending on whom you believe, but mtl hated him and questioned his character something fierce), and 2. he had a reputation for sitting by himself on the bus and never talking to anyone. again, i’m just remembering him in montreal and a bit in ottawa but he was compared to stephane richer in terms of being kind of a moody guy and an introvert. in talent, i am guessing the young promising turgeon was probably a poor man’s richer too. i wonder if turgeon had similar issues off the ice?

in general, in montreal it was like, if you think denis savard is a disappointment, wtf is this turgeon guy even?

i always say, if you get repeatedly traded for a certain kind of player, that says a lot about your limitations as a player. the older thrgeon got ptraded for two very competitive and sandpapery guys: pat verbeek and claude lemieux. probably that indicates what hfd and nj thought turgeon would never give them enough of. similarly, his little brother was traded (in catastrophically lopsided deals) for kirk muller and shayne corson.
 
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Wasn't it Hextall that hurt him pretty bad with a slash? I am trying to remember it being in the late 1980s.
 
Big Phil said:
Wasn't it Hextall that hurt him pretty bad with a slash? I am trying to remember it being in the late 1980s.
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Yes. Broke his arm during Canada Cup practice.

Turgeon's one of those players that today's medicine would have likely changed the course of his career. His first three seasons were quite good, but in his 2nd year he suffered a pulled abdominal muscle that caused him to miss 16 games. It was an injury he never really recovered from. He suffered it again '86 playoffs and missed the first half of the following season when doctors found a sports hernia that required extensive surgery (and that he had likely been playing with because it had been missed). Then there was the Hextall slash, followed by a separated shoulder in December of '88 that kept him out until March. At the end of 89- 90 he missed time with a pulled groin, an injury related to his ongoing hernia issues, and had hernia surgery again after he was traded to Montreal that kept him out until December. Finally he suffered a shattered knee cap two months after returning. Nothing but dumb luck. Then it was on to Ottawa in the expansion draft and oblivion.

One wonders if Hartford's doctors misdiagnosed his initial injury, missing the hernia and he continued to play and exacerbate the condition. The abdominal injury certainly derailed what was a promising career to start. 116 goals and 213 pits in his first 216 games before he reinjured the abdomen wall and had to have hernia surgery.
 
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What was the justification for taking him over Lafontaine? Nationality? Inept management? One of those rare drafts where 3rd-5th overall all end up being better that than 1st & 2nd.
 
Monsieur Gustave H said:
One of those rare drafts where 3rd-5th overall all end up being better that than 1st & 2nd.
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2006 comes to mind. a slam dunk hall of fame three-time cup captaining center (wearing #19), and two hall of very good guys, who each might still have a shot at rising above that level before all is said and done.

looking back, 1983 was a very deep first round all the way through. it only sags at the very beginning and very end of the first roynd.

you could make the argument that #2-16 all had better careers than #1. that’s rare for a #1 who came within a hair of 500 games.

#2-7 were all better than sylvain too.
 
Monsieur Gustave H said:
What was the justification for taking him over Lafontaine? Nationality? Inept management? One of those rare drafts where 3rd-5th overall all end up being better that than 1st & 2nd.
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Ron Francis had been taken two yrs. before. Hartford management probably thought they had their #1 center, so let's get him a weapon. Turgeon only looks like a bad pick in retrospect because of all the injuries. He was still 3rd in Calder voting behind Barrasso and Yzerman, and through their first four season had significantly outscored Lafontaine, who was on a stacked dynasty team, as opposed to the Whale. I certainly don't view him as the bust Brian Lawton was, taken first overall that draft.
 
Player I always liked. Obviously not as good as Pierre but he was no slouch either. Played with the Sens for a period.
 
Dennis Bonvie said:
What I remember best about him was that he told the media, when he was a rookie, that his little brother was a lot better player than he was.
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I think I remember him saying that. There was a 4 1/2 year age difference, so Pierre would've been about 14 at the time. Pierre was a phenomenon in minor hockey in Quebec, one of the best ever in the province.
 
double5son10 said:
One wonders if Hartford's doctors misdiagnosed his initial injury, missing the hernia and he continued to play and exacerbate the condition. The abdominal injury certainly derailed what was a promising career to start. 116 goals and 213 pits in his first 216 games before he reinjured the abdomen wall and had to have hernia surgery.
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There's a french serie (trajectoire) TrajectoiresHockey.com Season 5 - Sylvain Turgeon
The doctors didn't believe Turgeon was still hurt, so he played. It took a few seasons before they finally checked it. I guess playing with this injury for a while did irreparable damage. Anyway, I have not watched it in a while.
edit : Matteau says that during the off-season, they did some manual labor and Turgeon couldn't lift anything, his abs were killing him.
His brother Pierre says that doctors would clear Sylvain, he's play 2 games, miss 5. He kept saying he felt pain but the doctors told him he was good to go. He kept saying he was not right. A year or 2 after, he insisted they checked (tear under the stomach). It was the first of many other similar injuries diagnosed and then they started fixing them on other players affected later on.
 
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It's sad reading through this thread. Seems like turgeon's career was derailed by a series of misdiagnosis.

I vaguely remember him on the habs, and I wasn't impressed at all.
 
I wonder why people mention his size as a factor in getting drafted before LaFontaine and Yzerman. He was only 6 feet tall and around 190 pounds. Was a two-inch difference such a huge deal back then?
 
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