The Best Hockey Players of All Time

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

The Best Hockey Players of All Time — page 7 — 8 82 The number of career playoff goals Maurice Richard scored That still ranked eighth in NHL history through 2014 But Richard could do more than just pump pucks into the net He was one of the toughest players in the NHL too One of his most famous goals came in Game 7 of the 1952 Stanley Cup semifinals Montreal and the Boston Bruins were tied midway through the game when Richard fell face-first onto the ice He went to the locker room and came back with his face covered in stitches But he refused to let that slow him down With blood dripping down his face Richard scored the winning goal Though Montreal did not win the title that year the Canadiens did capture the Stanley Cup eight times during Richard’s career including five straight from 1956 to 1960 Richard retired after the 1959 60 season with 544 career goals That was still a team record through 2014 He came a long way from that open tryout in 1942

The Best Hockey Players of All Time — page 8 — 9 MAURICE RICHARD Hometown Montreal Quebec Canada Height Weight 5 feet 10 170 pounds Birth Date August 4 1921 Position Right wing Team Montreal Canadiens 1942 60 NHL All-Star Games 13 1947 59 Hart Trophy NHL MVP 1 1946 47 All-NHL First Team 8 1944 45 through 1949 50 1954 55 1955 56 Maurice Richard left and Jean Beliveau hold the Stanley Cup after the Canadiens 1958 victory

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