The Best Hockey Players of All Time

The Best Hockey Players of All Time — page 3 — INTRODUCTION Hockey players have a unique set of skills In many ways they are not like other athletes 4

The Best Hockey Players of All Time — page 4 — They skate instead of run They shoot instead of throw And they check instead of tackle But like other athletes they are supremely skilled and consistently tough They rely on stamina and endurance to pass the game’s most grueling tests And the best players get the coolest nicknames The Rocket Sid the Kid The Great One and Super Mario They all followed different paths to the National Hockey League NHL Yet they all had one thing in common They loved to play the game Here are some of the greatest hockey players of all time 5

The Best Hockey Players of All Time — page 5 — MAURICE RICHARD 6 The Montreal Canadiens were looking for players Maurice Richard was looking for a job And an open tryout provided hockey with its first superstar The 21-year-old Richard skated onto the ice It did not take long for him to catch the attention of his new teammates and earn one of hockey’s first great nicknames The Rocket Montreal veteran Ray Getliffe called Richard The Rocket because of how fast he could skate But Getliffe might as well have been talking about how quickly Richard could score goals He became the first player in league history to score 50 goals in one season That was in 1944 45 when the league played just 50 games per year Two years later he won the Hart Trophy which is given to the league’s most valuable player MVP The Rocket scored 50 goals in 50 games in 1944 45

The Best Hockey Players of All Time — page 6

5

PAGE 5 OF 63

The only kids' eBook subscription service that offers thousands of high-quality books from well known publishers like HarperCollins, National Geographic and others.

JavaScript Required

Whoops! We're sorry but Epic doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Check your web browser's settings to make sure it's enabled.