Story written by Evan Milner
MONTREAL – Pierre Turgeon waited 13 years for the call to the Hall and when, finally, it came through, he took nearly as long to pick up.
The former Hab was working out at his Vegas hotel in June when a phone call from a Toronto area code lit up his screen. Naturally, the 54-year-old thought little of it and continued his sweat.
“It could be media calling to say, ‘What about this year? Is it going to happen, you think, or not?’” he thought to himself.
To his credit, those were the calls Turgeon had received for 12 years since becoming eligible for hockey’s top honor in 2010 but this time it wasn’t the media calling, it was Lanny McDonald – the chairman of the Hockey Hall of Fame and the bearer of, in this case, good news.
Turgeon couldn’t be bothered in the moment, however. He continued his workout through McDonald’s second attempt at reaching him, then the third and fourth. Finally, on McDonald’s fifth bid, it clicked in Turgeon’s mind.
“’Okay, this is from 416, the same phone number,’ the Rouyn-Noranda, QC native told himself. I said, ‘Okay, I better answer this just in case.’”
Fortunately for him, he did, and the three words that followed told Turgeon everything he needed to know about the conversation that would soon unfold.
“‘It’s Lanny McDonald.’ That’s all I heard. That’s all I needed to hear,” joked the four-time NHL All-Star. McDonald, a Hall-of-Famer himself, was, of course, calling to tell Turgeon he had been elected to hockey royalty as part of the class of 2023.