Though it’s far from the NHL’s most storied rivalry, there’s still quite a bit of shared history and mythos between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Buffalo Sabres, situated just 99 miles apart via Ontario’s Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW). And since it’s the case with practically every sports rivalry, it should come as no surprise that a number of players have suited up for both teams over the years.
Countless players have been in both Toronto and Buffalo at various points in their careers, with some spending brief stints with both teams and others having brief runs with one after years with the other. But what about those who had a distinguishable tenure with both teams? It might surprise you to find out that there have been a few, and some are very big names. And since we still have a few weeks before the first Battle of the QEW this season, let’s in the meantime examine the five most notable NHL stars that played for both the Maple Leafs and the Sabres.
5. Grant Fuhr
Legendary goaltender Grant Fuhr, the first black player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, made his name in Edmonton, backstopping the Oilers to four consecutive Stanley Cup championships from 1984 to 1988. He also won the Vezina Trophy in 1988 and appeared in six All-Star Games. However, the final two years of his marvelous tenure in Alberta were significantly derailed by substance abuse issues and the Oilers traded him and fellow Hall of Famer Glenn Anderson to Toronto as part of a seven-player blockbuster in 1991.
Fuhr seemed to regain himself in Ontario and posted a 2.66 goals-against average in the 1991-92 season. Despite his efforts, the Maple Leafs finished fourth-last in the league and decided that another shake-up was needed. The following year he became part of another blockbuster, but he didn’t have as far to travel this time at least.
In February 1993, Toronto sent Fuhr to the Sabres, one of their closest rivals, in exchange for Daren Puppa, a first-round pick and another player whose name you might find later on this list. Though Puppa had been perfectly good in net for the Sabres and was even the Vezina Trophy runner-up in 1990, they evidently thought they needed to upgrade as well and paid a hefty price for it. Fortunately for them, the gamble did work out, just not directly.
Fuhr played well in Buffalo when healthy, but the issue was that he rarely was. After helping his team to the 1993 Playoffs, he missed over half of the 1993-94 campaign and it opened the door for his relatively unknown backup to emerge. Dominik Hasek took the NHL by storm that season and the rest, as they say, is history. Fuhr played an important role in Hasek’s development but there was no way he was ever going to take the Sabres’ net back and became expendable. A 1995 trade to Los Angeles reunited him with Oilers dynasty teammates Wayne Gretzky and Jari Kurri.
4. Doug Gilmour
Unlike Fuhr, with whom he was briefly teammates, Doug Gilmour is a Maple Leafs icon and was perhaps their most important player of the 1990s. Acquired in 1992, “The Killer” instantly became their centerpiece and eventually succeeded Wendell Clark as captain in 1994. He helped the previously beleaguered Leafs reach the Conference Final in both 1993 and 1994, twice falling in seven games. The former was controversial as he was high-sticked by Gretzky in overtime in Game 6. No penalty was assessed and the Great One scored the winner moments later, the Kings then won the series in Game 7.
Though Gilmour continued to excel, the Leafs sputtered after that and they traded him to New Jersey in 1997. He signed with Chicago in 1998 and eventually became their captain as well. His interactions with Toronto weren’t done there and he scored against the Leafs in the last game at Toronto’s historic Maple Leaf Gardens on Feb. 13, 1999. Similarly to his time in Ontario, however, the Blackhawks stumbled towards the end of his tenure and at the 2000 Trade Deadline he was sent to Buffalo.
The Sabres were just one season removed from their own controversial defeat in the 1999 Stanley Cup Final (which they defeated the Maple Leafs en route to). According to The Globe and Mail, Gilmour was unhappy throughout his time in Buffalo, but was nevertheless a key contributor (from “Gilmour ends a killer career”, The Globe and Mail, 9/9/2003). He helped spark the Sabres to the 2000 Playoffs with 17 points in 11 games but they fell to Philadelphia in the first round. He posted 38 points in 71 games the following season and the Sabres again made the playoffs, this time falling to Pittsburgh in seven games in the second round.
Signing with Montreal in 2001, Gilmour’s time in Buffalo ironically may have been overshadowed by an incident against the Sabres early the next season when he kneed former teammate Vaclav Varada after the latter had made contact with Canadiens’ goaltender Jose Theodore. Both men were suspended for their actions. Montreal traded him back to Toronto in 2003 but he managed just one game before retiring due to a knee injury. The Maple Leafs raised his No. 93 to the rafters in 2016.
3. Alexander Mogilny
Alexander Mogilny was selected by the Sabres in 1988 and made hockey history the following year when he became the first Soviet-born NHL draft choice to defect to North America. Set apart thanks to blazing skating speed and terrific puck handling, it took a few years for him to find his footing but he soon emerged as one of the most feared scorers of the 1990s. He found remarkable chemistry with Pat LaFontaine and the two tore through opposing lineups, combining for a whopping 275 points in the 1992-93 season.
When LaFontaine was lost for the 1993-94 campaign, Mogilny took his place as Sabres’ captain, making him the first Russian in NHL history to serve in such a capacity. Unfortunately, Buffalo ran into a number of financial constraints in the middle of the decade and were forced to trade their superstar sniper to Vancouver at the 1995 Draft. This reunited him with former Red Army teammate Pavel Bure and he continued to produce consistently, but injuries eventually began to haunt him and he was traded to New Jersey in 2000.
Mogilny won the Stanley Cup with the Devils later that season, becoming a member of the Triple Gold Club. In 2001 he became a free agent for the first time in his career and returned to the Golden Horseshoe by signing with the Toronto, with whom he won the Lady Byng Trophy in 2003. The sight of their beloved former star wearing the blue and white was a sour pill for Sabres fans to swallow. And as if that wasn’t enough by itself, he scored his 1,000th career point in Buffalo in March 2004.
The Russian had numerous additional successes after leaving Western New York but he was never quite the same electric player again. After returning to New Jersey in 2005, he hung them up in 2007 with 1,032 points in just 990 games. To this day he remains the most notable exclusion from the Hall of Fame, having been eligible for induction since 2010. Though he’ll surely receive the call eventually, it will be egregiously past due when he does and both Maple Leafs and Sabres fans won’t be satisfied until it happens.
2. Dave Andreychuk
Born halfway between Toronto and Buffalo in Hamilton, Ontario, it’s very fitting that Dave Andreychuk ended up playing in both cities. Drafted 16th overall in 1982, perhaps no one player was more valuable to the Sabres during the 1980s. Renowned for his goal-scoring prowess despite his lack of skating speed, he was a particular force on the powerplay and was their propulsion throughout an uneven time in their history. In his nine full seasons in Buffalo, he never scored less than 20 goals and remained productive even when the team stumbled in the latter half of the decade.
Unfortunately for Andreychuk, his Sabres career ended unceremoniously when he was Buffalo’s offering in the dubious aforementioned Fuhr trade, a move that is still genuinely baffling 31 years later. Why then-general manager Gerry Meehan felt so possessed to acquire a goaltender he didn’t need and gave up so much for him is anyone’s guess, but the franchise icon nevertheless switched sides. As tough as it was for Sabres fans to see Mogilny with the Maple Leafs, imagine when they saw Andreychuk in dark blue for the first time.
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Andreychuk’s best statistical season came in 1993-94 with the Leafs, in which he scored a career-high 53 goals and 99 points. Alongside Gilmour, he was a vital part of the teams that went to the 1993 and 1994 Eastern Conference Finals and fans eventually dubbed him “Uncle Dave”. He was traded to New Jersey in 1996 and signed with Boston in 1999, though he would be sent to Colorado later that season alongside Ray Bourque, with whom he’d eventually tie the record for the longest career before winning the Stanley Cup. He signed with the Sabres for a one-off reunion in 2000-01 before heading to Tampa Bay the following summer.
Though heavily criticized at the time for joining the lowly Lightning, Andreychuk’s prognostication proved excellent and he eventually led them to their first Stanley Cup in 2004. It took 22 years and 1,597 games for Uncle Dave to finally lift the Cup over his head and nobody could deny how deserving of it he was. He ended his Hall of Fame career in 2006 with 1,639 games played and 1,338 points. He was also the NHL’s all-time leader in powerplay goals with 274 before Alexander Ovechkin finally passed him in 2021.
1. Tim Horton
Depending on where you live in either Canada or the United States, you might not even know that the namesake of Tim Hortons coffee shops was in fact a person who was quintessential to Toronto and Buffalo alike. Renowned for his strength and toughness throughout a 20-year tenure with the Maple Leafs, Miles “Tim” Horton was named to six NHL All-Star teams and won four Stanley Cups between 1962 and 1967.
The aging star was traded to the New York Rangers in 1970 and was later acquired by Pittsburgh in the 1971 Intra-League Draft. The following year he was claimed again, this time by the recently-founded Sabres, helmed by former Maple Leafs GM Punch Imlach, who saw the opportunity to bring a strong veteran presence aboard his fledgling team. Though he was 42 at the time, Horton came to Buffalo and made an immediate impact, helping the Sabres to their first-ever playoff appearance in 1973. He re-signed for the 1973-74 season, but that was where things unfortunately took a grim turn.
Horton had become a household name in both Toronto and Buffalo by this point, but that connection to both cities proved to be tragically ironic. The Maple Leafs and Sabres met in Toronto on Feb. 20, 1974 and the 44-year-old opted to travel by himself. Returning to Buffalo in the early hours of the next morning, he was killed when he lost control of his car after driving at a dangerous speed and crashed on the QEW in St. Catharine’s, Ontario. His autopsy wasn’t made public for 31 years but later revealed that he had been driving under the influence of both alcohol and barbiturates.
Though he was gone far too soon, Horton’s legacy speaks for itself, as does his impact on both teams. In addition to being posthumously inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, his No. 2 was retired by Buffalo in 1996 and his No. 7 by Toronto in 2016, making him the only man to receive the honor from both teams. Though it’s been five decades since his passing, his name is remembered fondly by Maple Leafs and Sabres fans alike, one of few things that both can actually agree upon. How different would the mythos of both teams be without him? Thankfully we’ll never know.
Were any players omitted that you would have included on your list? Who do you think was the greatest player that wore both the Maple Leafs’ and Sabres’ jerseys?
