Billy Guerin and Doug Weight have been long-time friends, teammates, Stanley Cup winners, World Cup of Hockey champions and members of USA hockey’s Greatest Generation.
And they are both U.S. Hockey Hall of Famers, their election announced Thursday with fellow Class of 2013 members Cindy Curley, Ron Mason and Peter Karmanos.
Guerin, the power winger who began his 17-year NHL career with the Devils, and Weight, the finesse-oriented center who started his 19-year career as a Ranger, were teammates on the 2008-09 Islanders.
They also shared a Team USA jersey for the 1998, 2002 and 2006 Olympic Games and for the 1996 World Cup in which the Yanks beat Team Canada in the final for this country’s only best-on-best tournament victory ever.
Guerin and Weight are the 14th and 15th players from that team, which dropped the first game of the best-of-three final in overtime in Philadelphia before taking the final two matches in Montreal over an opponent that featured Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Eric Lindros, to be elected to the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.
That list includes tournament MVP Mike Richter, captain Brian Leetch, Pat LaFontaine, Tony Amonte, Chris Chelios, Kevin and Derian Hatcher, Gary Suter, Keith Tkachuk, John LeClair, Mike Modano, Phil Housley and Brett Hull, who held dual US-Canadian citizenship but chose to represent the Red, White and Blue. GM Lou Lamoriello is also an inductee.
“In training camp, I roomed with a quiet guy named Brett Hull,” Weight said, wryly. “I remember that in our room, Hullie was doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, and he said, ‘We’re going to win this.’
“Over and over, he said we’re the better team. With the guys we had, and Ron Wilson as our coach, we truly expected to win that. We truly believed it and we put it in on the ice,” said Weight, currently an Islanders’ assistant coach. “We pushed out egos aside. … Patty LaFontaine on the fourth line, with his talent, never batting an eye.
“It was a team determined to put the USA jersey first.”
Guerin, a pro scout for the Penguins, also teamed with Weight to win a silver medal in the 2002 Calgary Olympics in which Canada won gold.
“Representing my country was always a dream of mine since the 1980 Miracle on Ice,” he said. “It was a thrill to be able to live out my dream and always an enormous honor.”
“In ’96, I felt the attitude was completely different. Canada set the bar, but we felt it didn’t matter who we were up against, we were the best. It was a very special group; a nice mix of talent, swagger and hard work.”
Guerin, who won Stanley Cups with the Devils in 1995 and the Penguins in 2009, recorded 856 points (429 goals, 427 assists) in 1,263 NHL career games. Weight, who won the Cup with Carolina in 2006, recorded 1,033 points (278-755) in 1,238 matches.
Curley was described yesterday as, “the Cammi Granato of women’s hockey before there was Cammi Granato.” Mason won 924 games behind the bench at Lake Superior State, Bowling Green and Michigan State, winning the 1986 NCAA title with the Spartans. Karmanos, the owner who took the Whalers out of Hartford and moved the franchise to Carolina, has run the successful Compuware junior program in Detroit for decades.