The Maurice Richard Trophy will be awarded this weekend to the player who scored the most goals this season in the National Hockey League. There is no suspense. It’s not determined by a vote of sports writers, players or fans, so there’s no announcement. Auston Matthews is the winner, for the second straight year.
Matthews is the 14th scorer to win the award in its 24 seasons. It has gone to scorers who were great (Alex Ovechkin, nine times) to surprising (Milan Hejduk). It has been shared three times. All but 10 of the 27 winners scored 50 goals — or more — in having their names engraved on a trophy honouring the first-ever 50-goal scorer, Rocket Richard.
Yet the name of the man who scored the most goals in one season, along with the second-most, is missing. When he played, there was no trophy.
Maybe there will be a Wayne Gretzky Trophy in the NHL, eventually. For now, it goes to the team winning the OHL’s Western Division.
Gretzky scored 92 goals. Think about that. That’s 10 goals more than one a game, or 12 in the 80-game season when Gretzky set the record. That was 40 years ago. During the next season, when he “slumped” to 71 goals, I had an opportunity to ask him about the 92.
Ever modest, even he was impressed.
“I scored 92 goals and I’m very proud of it, and when I think back…it IS a lot of goals,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to duplicate 92 goals. It’s only eight goals from a hundred, but like I say, all I can do is go on the ice and hope to score as many goals as possible. Some nights you’re a little bit sharper than other nights and the puck goes in the net a little bit easier. Last year was an exceptional year. Everything that I shot at the net went in.”
That was the year Gretzky obliterated The Rocket’s record of 50 goals in 50 games. It took Gretzky just 39 games, and the 50th goal was his fifth of that game.
He was the first to average a goal a game. He authored four of the top 11 highest-scoring seasons in history. The closest active player is Ovechkin, 24th on the list. Matthews is 33rd. Gretzky scored the most goals in a career, 894, and only Ovechkin, who will be 37 before next season, is a threat to catch him…if he averages more than 40 goals over three seasons. Matthews would have to average 40 goals for the next 16 seasons.
Only Brett Hull and Mario Lemieux also had 80-goal seasons, once each. Of the 14 players who scored 70, Gretzky (4), Hull (3) and Lemieux (2) were nine of them, all coming before the arrival of the Richard Trophy.
The Greatest, of course, is Gretzky. It seems unfair that his name, more than the others, will never be on a trophy that recognizes NHL goal-scoring champions.
Maybe the NHL could backdate the award.
